Ten of the world’s largest cement companies have formally committed themselves to a five-year plan of action to improve their social and environmental performance.
The firms account for one-third of global cement production. They are now urging all companies in the sector to sign up, and a number have expressed interest in doing so.
The ‘agenda for action’ commits the ten firms to have put in place by 2006 a system for monitoring and reporting carbon dioxide emissions that can be applied throughout the industry.
By the same date, each of the ten is to report on its progress towards meeting emissions targets and to have made plans to rehabilitate all their industrial and quarry sites. Each company is to publish a statement of business ethics by 2006.
The companies are jointly developing key performance indicators on all aspects of sustainable development and a common approach to assessing the social and environmental impact of their activities.
They have also set up a joint taskforce to improve the industry’s safety record.
Marcus Akerman, chief executive of Holcim, one of the signatories, said the key issues the industry needed to address were climate change, employee safety, land use and resource efficiency. ‘This work programme for the next five years will be achieved not by a giant step but by incremental ones,’ he said.
The group has left companies to work ‘at their own pace’. It says industry-wide targets ‘which may be too stringent for some and too easy for others would be meaningless.’
‘We’re under no illusion that all the companies will advance at the same pace’, said Lorenzo Zambrano, chief executive of Cemex. ‘We will share information, but those who advance quicker will establish a competitive advantage.’
A five-strong ‘assurance group’ of independent experts chaired by Mostafa Tolba, former director general of the United Nations Environment Programme, will monitor progress.
An interim report will appear in 2005 and a full progress report in 2007, when the action plan will be reviewed.
Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, head of business and industry relations at WWF International in Switzerland, said the initiative was ‘a clear and positive sign that the ten cement companies involved accept the need for change’.
But he added: ‘We’d like them to have clear carbon dioxide reduction targets and rehabilitation programmes in place within two years. The cement industry is responsible for five per cent of total global [carbon dioxide] emissions, so that indicates the kind of radical change needed.’