Sustainable construction

We continue to develop products that deliver a low carbon impact through reduced energy, greater use of recycled content, or reduced raw materials to produce the same performance.

We again ran a series of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) seminars for architects, engineers and other specifiers about ground granulated blast furnace slag, a cement-replacement material which we market under the brand name Regen. Regen reduces embodied CO2 in concrete and provides a number of other benefits.

This year we extended the reach of our seminars by presenting an online introduction to Regen hosted by industry magazine Building. The 45-minute CPD webinar was presented by key account manager for bulk cement John Doolan and technical development manager Robin Styles through a partnership with the publication. It was watched live by 300 engineers, architects and designers, with hundreds more viewing it on the Building website. 

We recognise the growing demand for Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), driven by building certification schemes such as BREEAM, to present transparent, verified and comparable information about the life-cycle environmental impact of our products. We have developed a version of BRE’s life cycle assessment tool LINA to produce EPDs in line with EN 15804, the European standard for the sustainability of construction works. In 2018 we published verified EPDs for eight of our top selling concrete mixes as well as for an average concrete mix (copies of which can be found here). 

We are using EPDs to highlight the improved environmental performance of concrete mixes with higher Regen content. Below is an example for a 40N strength mix, focused on the global warming potential (GWP) of each mix type, it shows the embodied carbon of the highest Regen replacement mix having less than half the embodied carbon of the cement only equivalent.

*based on the cradle to gate assessment of 2016 data from all Hanson UK concrete plants using the BRE LINA EPD tool

We plan to develop and publish EPDs for more of our products in the future, including cement, Regen and asphalt. For more information about EPDs, please email marketing@hanson.com.

Our asphalt division is in the second year of a multi-million pound investment programme to increase energy efficiency, increase the use of recycled products and improve the reliability of its plants. The investment plan is focused on improved control systems, technology to reduce energy consumption, and modifications to ensure all our plants are capable of using recycled asphalt planings (RAP) in new asphalt mixes.