The outstanding benefits of concrete have been appreciated for thousands of years, with the first official record of its use as a building material dating all the way back to the 6,500 BC in the United Arab Emirates. In fact, some of the structures erected hundreds - if not thousands of years ago - like Rome’s renowned Colosseum, which was built with travertine limestone, volcanic rock, and brick-faced concrete - are still standing, as a testament to concrete’s unmatched durability. But the material that paved the way for modern civilization is also a big contributor of greenhouse gas emissions globally, and the importance of decreasing that impact has now become one of the most important goals for the industry.
So while all roads might lead to Rome, Cyril Giraud, Head of Sustainability at Holcim Australia and New Zealand, is on a different path. He tells us about the sustainability journey the leading supplier of aggregates and concrete has been on - and some of the most pertinent changes the concrete industry has seen where sustainability agenda is concerned.
“The industry has always had a strong focus on environmental management,” Cyril explains, referring to the Australian market, which - he adds - has a very potent regulatory framework. “Managing environmental impact is part of gaining our licence to operate. So there’s probably been decades of really good, evolving practice on how we manage dust, water, biodiversity or noise around our operations.”
“But we've really had that lens very much focused on the operations being the centre and I think the biggest change in the last few years has been the broadening of the conversation around sustainability and what it means,” Cyril describes. “It used to be limited to environmental management, and it's been extraordinary to witness the transformation of the definition of sustainability - for us as an industry - to incorporate the community side of things, and also how we start to supply the market with sustainable solutions.”
Cyril adds that for a long time, concrete was the missing link in the sustainability conversation. “You had growth of sustainability professionals in the building, construction and architectural space . At the same time you also had the growth of the life cycle assessment, and the growing community awareness of how things fit together,” he paints the picture. “And yet, the key contributors of CO2 to construction projects - concrete, in this instance - was not part of the conversation. So the biggest change, really, has been that transfer to being a part of the solution as part of the broader supply chain.”
This shift has galvanised the industry, bringing an exponential increase in addressing sustainability in the true sense of the word - sustainability roadmaps have become a part of the agenda for all the major industry organisations, shareholders’ focus has shifted towards sustainability - and for some, like Holcim - financial performance is being tied to sustainability, too. “We've got a target of sustainable financing - so that we start to link our financial performance with our sustainability performance, which is a very interesting concept that didn't really happen before,” Cyril says.
This industry-wide transformation hit a milestone in October 2021, with a release of the Decarbonisation Pathways for Australian Cement and Concrete Sector. “This report was released to publicly demonstrate the commitment of the industry associations - like members of Cement Concrete & Aggregates Australia (CCAA), for instance - to be net zero by 2050,” Cyril says. “It lays out all the different pathways available to the industry on how to achieve this.”
Holcim is very much aligned with the proposed pathways and has undoubtedly helped advance the sustainability agenda for the industry through their own sustainability aspirations. With their environmental and social responsibility ethos built around the ideas of transparency and proactive action, the innovative organisation is behind quite a few of the industry’s defining initiatives, like the industry-first publication of an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for ready-mix concrete in 2019 gave the customers transparency on the product’s carbon footprint.
This momentous initiative - an embodiment of Holcim’s transparency strategy the brand adopted a year before - kickstarted the process of relying on independent, third party data across the board. “We've been going through the motions of having EPDs for more of our products,” Cyril explains. “More than 50% of all the products that we sold last year were covered by EPDs.”
Now, with both their 2030 and 2050 targets validated by the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi) - which, Cyril mentions, only seven companies have done so far - Holcim has a clear vision of where their sustainability journey takes them next. And with their commitment to transparency and strong sense of responsibility, the brand is bound to continue advancing the broader agenda for the concrete and construction industry on the way to net zero by 2050 - and beyond. “From a construction material supplier, we became an organisation that builds progress for the people and the planet,” Cyril sums up.
