'We have to improve our operations to be more sustainable,' LafargeHolcim CEO says https://t.co/NoWhKuZuX3— CNBC (@CNBC) July 31, 2020
He’s dead right.
Cement giant LafargeHolcim – parent company of Aggregate Industries – pumped out 148,000,000 tonnes of CO2 in 2019 alone, equivalent to 38 coal-fired power plants or more than the Philippines.
But there's a big difference between talking sustainable and doing sustainable.
For example, the plans put forward by LafargeHolcim’s UK subsidiary for Straitgate Farm must surely rank as one of the most unsustainable schemes for any quarry proposal in the UK.
All sand and gravel quarries put processing plant on or near to site to minimise haulage distances. Aggregate Industries on the other hand proposes to haul each as-dug load from Straitgate 23 MILES to its processing plant in Uffculme; a round trip total of 46 miles for each load, a total distance of 2.5 million miles in all. And all this before any onward distribution of processed material to end markets.
It makes little sense economically. It makes no sense environmentally.
Was anybody at Aggregate Industries thinking sustainability when proposing that? Of course not.
LafargeHolcim's CEO says the company must do better:
Speaking to "Squawk Box Europe", Jan Jenisch was asked about the topics of ESG (environmental, social and governance), how his industry was perceived as being both dirty and energy inefficient, the notion of using government funds to "build back better," and the role LafargeHolcim could play in this.
"In our company it’s clear: we want to be part of that, and we have to improve our operations to be more sustainable," he replied.
In other words, desperate to be part of government-backed infrastructure projects, we will say – not necessarily do – whatever it takes.
"We don’t take sustainability lightly; sustainability has to be the DNA of our company," Jan Jenisch tells @CNBC.https://t.co/ib1j6j1r5w #LHN #H12020Results pic.twitter.com/uYEKZHMcfd— LafargeHolcim (@LafargeHolcim) July 30, 2020
But if LafargeHolcim and Aggregate Industries continue to pursue their demonstrably unsustainable plan for Straitgate, it will be transparently clear that no DNA has changed, and all that talk about improving sustainability was just that: talk – more of the same greenwash that we have become so very used to.
