Environment
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Preserving resources

Lafarge has defined 2 objectives with regard to the preservation of natural resources: reducing consumption and finding alternative solutions.

Recycling and using alternative products

Wherever the necessary infrastructures exist, Lafarge:

  • recycles construction materials,
  • replaces natural resources with by-products from other industries,
  • replaces fossil fuels with nontoxic alternative fuels, such as biomass and industrial and agricultural waste.

 

Lafarge is thus committed to an industrial ecology approach.

For exemple :

  • 40 % of the gypsum used by the Group is a by-product of desulfurization in the power industry;
  • The paper used to produce plasterboard contains 95 % recycled cellulose fiber.

 

The Group is committed to limiting the use of natural resources in all of its operations:

  • Alternative fuels, such as biomass, account for 12 % of the Group's total fuel uses (versus 11 % in 2009);
  • 84 % of Lafarge plants use alternative fuels;
  • Since 2009, the use of solid waste as fuel for the Group's cement plants increased by 20 %.
Use of pozzolan and alternative fuels, Uganda

Recycling

Some examples

  • Gypsum: a large part of the raw materials are replaced with building and demolition waste. Synthetic gypsum is used more than 50% of the time.
  • Cement: 11% of the raw materials used are alternative materials: slag (residual impurities from steel industry blast furnaces) and fly ash (the main waste product from coal-fired power plants).

Give value to emissions

Lafarge has already run a pilot project at its Val d'Azergues cement plant (France) to absorb CO2 emissions by cultivating micro-algae that can then be used as biofuel.

Last update on 05/04/2011

Environmental challenges

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