Industry Challenges

1. Sustainability

Cement is the essential ingredient for sustainable construction. It is needed to make concrete, a basic building material for the construction of houses, hospitals, schools, roads and drainage systems. The industry supports 90% of the UK’s cement needs and utilises waste as alternative fuel or raw materials, thereby helping to solve some of the UK’s waste disposal problems. Over one million tonnes of waste was used in 2005 as replacement for conventional raw materials and fossil fuels.

The use of alternative energy sources not only replaces fossil fuels, but also cuts the overall total amount of carbon dioxide that would have been produced if both the fossil fuels and the processed waste alternatives had been burned.

The cement industry produces carbon dioxide directly from kilns and transport and indirectly from electricity use. The industry has already demonstrated its ability to improve its climate change performance. It signed up to the UK Climate Change Agreement in 2001 and reduced direct emissions of carbon dioxide by almost a quarter between 1990 and 2004, which relates to over three million tonnes of CO2.

The industry is well on track to meet its energy efficiency improvement target of a 26.8 per cent reduction by 2010.

Through the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, ten industry leaders have developed the Cement Sustainability Initiative. The UK industry is 100 per cent signed up to the initiative. Lafarge, Heidelberg Cement (parent of Castle Cement) and Cemex were all involved in the original project, and Buxton Lime Industries has agreed to deliver its commitments.

In 2006, the British Cement Association published its third Performance report, which sets out progress and future actions towards embedding sustainability in its operations. Copies can be downloaded from the library section of the BCA website.

2. Occupational Health and Safety
BCA member companies have committed themselves to a dramatic reduction in accidents at work. Their target is to achieve a 30 per cent reduction in injury rates every year until 2010 compared to a baseline of 2003. Areas identified for immediate action include:

accidents caused by falls from height, transport, slips and trips

management of the industry's process operations, general maintenance and contractors working on-site.

occupational health including product safety.

The industry's health and safety steering group is made up of representatives from trade unions, the Health and Safety Executive and safety specialists from the cement manufacturers and the British Cement Association.

3. Industry use of waste-derived fuels

With fuel representing some 35 per cent of fixed costs, the need to remain competitive has led the industry to examine several alternative fuels derived from a number of waste streams over the past ten years. These include used tyres, recycled liquid fuels, plastic packaging wastes, waste oils, animal products (tallow and meat and bone meal) and sewage sludge pellets.

As a result of its accumulated experience, the industry now has a significant role to play in developing solutions for the country's problems in dealing with hazardous and other wastes. By recovering energy from these material, it effectively lifts them up what is known as the ‘waste hierarchy’, and significantly reduces the volumes going to landfill. The use of fossil fuels to generate energy has decreased by almost 23 per cent since 1998 per tonne of cement produced while on the same basis, the use of raw materials dropped by 2.5 per cent.

The use of waste-derived fuels is controlled through the Substitute Fuels Protocol, introduced by the Environment Agency in the mid-1990s. This sets out the principles and practices for the use of waste-derived fuels and the consultation procedure and trials to demonstrate their suitability.

The Agency accepted that alternative fuels can be used in cement kilns without environmental detriment, and in some cases can even achieve substantial emission reductions. The revised SFP states that kiln operators using substitute fuels will demonstrate the environmental benefits of the fuels they propose to substitute for conventional fossil fuels.

4. Contaminated Land

The cement industry has an important role to play in helping government achieve its target of 60% of new development being on brownfield sites. A cement-based remediation technique can bring contaminated land back in use. Remediation has further environmental benefits, as it protects Greenfield sites and prevents the need for ‘dig and dump’ techniques that uses landfill sites.

BCA published 'The Essential Guide to Stabilisation/Solidification for the Remediation of Brownfield Land using Cement and Lime' in collaboration with the British Lime Association. Further information: the Concrete Bookshop, Tel: 01276 608778 or email: enquiries@concretebookshop.com

5. Improved Product Safety
New European legislation on the marketing and use of cement and cement-containing preparations came into effect on 17 January 2005. The Chromium (VI) Directive is designed to minimise chromate-related allergic dermatitis which may arise from the unprotected use of wet cement. UK cement manufacturers are adding small amounts of reducing agents where necessary to ensure that their cements have levels of soluble chromium (VI) when water is added that are not more than two parts per million by mass of the dry cement. Cement manufacturers display the product’s despatch/packaging date and shelf life on their delivery documents and bags. Detailed information sheets are available from the library section of the BCA website, www.cementindustry.co.uk.

6. Competitiveness
In order to maintain the competitiveness of the UK cement industry, BCA and its member companies engage with the UK Government and the various EU institutions.
It is vital that legislation and regulation do not disproportionately impact upon the cement sector.