Environment
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Limiting waste

Lafarge takes a two-pronged approach to limiting waste: it recycles production waste and reduces construction waste.

Recycling production waste

Year after year, the Group increases the proportion of production waste it recycles. Products suitable for recycling include substandard plasterboard and cement with kilning defects.

Factories reuse such products as raw materials or alternative fuel.

The Cement Business has created a "Resource Recovery" team dedicated to industrial ecology.

Reducing construction waste

To accomplish this, Lafarge:

  • designs materials which "save" on raw materials, such as Ductal®. The manufacturing process for Ductal® consumes fewer natural resources (and less energy) than conventional concretes,
  • promotes the recovery of waste on construction sites.

 

Lafarge is committed to reducing the amount of construction waste sent to landfills.

In 2008, only 0.79% of cement produced and 1.3% of gypsum was sent to landfills.

Waste sorting

A green building site in the U.K.

In Bristol, waste sorting was initiated on the construction site of a hospital. Color-coded skips were used to separate the different types of waste. Salvaged gypsum was immediately fed back into the manufacturing circuit.

As a result, less waste was produced and natural gypsum resources were conserved.

Last update on 07/22/2009

Environmental challenges

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