Aggregate Industries resumes sustainability reporting

Back in 2020, we asked "Has Aggregate Industries given up reporting CO2 emissions?". We wrote:

... go to Aggregate Industries’ Sustainability Reports and Policies page and what do we now find? Not the back catalogue of sustainability reports previously there, nor a shiny new one for 2019. 

What we find instead is parent LafargeHolcim’s 2019 report – while Aggregate Industries’ CO2 numbers are suddenly nowhere to be found. 

We can obviously help with the back catalogue of reports – 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2000 – plotting Aggregate Industries’ CO2 journey: a company now emitting in the region of 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 each year, more than 5 times the amount it did in 1999. 

But has Aggregate Industries really given up reporting carbon emissions? 

Is it because the numbers stubbornly refused to fall despite best efforts, or is it because the company stubbornly refused to embrace more sustainable ways? 

Aggregate Industries' application to quarry Straitgate Farm would of course indicate the latter.

This time last year, aggregate.com/sustainability was still not showing a sustainability report, although the company had in fact been burying CO2 figures for 2020, 2021, and 2022 in financial reports lodged at Companies House.

So, is Aggregate Industries now ready to report its sustainability figures publicly again? Is the company ready to broadcast how much CO2 it is emitting? Are the figures at last going in the right direction? Does it finally have a positive story to tell?  

Clearly, the company thinks it does. In August last year, before leaving the company for sunnier climes, the then sustainability director issued these two reports:

 

The sustainability report for 2022 claims: 

Investments within our cement plant and efficiency improvements across all business areas have helped to reduce emissions compared to our 2020 baseline. 

How emissions compare with all the previous baselines the company has set in the past, the report does not say. In 2018, we posted If AI’s record is an example of corporate action on climate change, we’re all screwed.  

On nature, the report is proud to tell us: 

Our Hillhead Quarry, near Cullompton in Devon, has a new woodland after we teamed up with a group of local residents and members of local environmental group the Uffculme Green Team, to plant around 1,100 trees. Native species including English oak, hornbeam, hazel, blackthorn, hawthorn and holly were planted to provide more wildlife-friendly habitat in the area. The scheme will benefit all species, but in particular the hazel dormouse, an elusive and declining species whose numbers have dropped by 50 per cent since the millennium and for which the south-west is somewhat of a stronghold. 

Bravo. But of course, that’s the same elusive and declining species prevalent in the ancient hedgerows at Straitgate that Aggregate Industries has earmarked for destruction. 

In the company’s Sustainability Strategy 2023 Update, the buzz word is community – which is as it should be, given the invasive nature of the company’s business model:

We will strive to make a positive impact on those communities where we live and operate.

We also recognise that our operations can have a negative impact on some of our neighbouring communities and we are committed to proactively eliminating or minimising this impact, wherever possible. We already have stringent planning obligations in place at many of our sites, which limit operating hours, number of truck movements, noise levels and dust emissions. However, we are committed to going above and beyond legal compliance which we see as our minimum requirement. We already do this in many cases and proactively engage with our local communities through meetings, open days and school visits. We also recognise that we are able to contribute to our neighbouring communities by donating staff time for volunteering activities, materials to help with local projects as well as monetary contributions. We are not only committed to continuing this but we will build on these successes. 

So, let’s see what happens at Straitgate. 

Let's see how far above and beyond the company is prepared to go.

Let's see how the company proactively engages with this neighbouring community, that has so far seen nothing but blight and aggravation. 

Let's see how much the company is able to contribute.

Let’s see if Aggregate Industries can walk the walk.