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“The motivation behind the EcoCem brand of products is to reduce the embodied carbon of cement and concrete,” said Shawn McMillan, Vice President, Cement for Lehigh Hanson’s Canada Region. “The introduction of EcoCem®PLUS to the Prairie market builds on our commitment to providing environmentally responsible types of cement that deliver excellent performance while dramatically reducing CO2 emissions.” EcoCem®PLUS can lower the carbon footprint by more than 22% (-184kg CO2-eq) as compared to Lehigh’s General Use (GU) cement and 32% (-308.5kg CO2-eq) compared to the current industry average GU cement when comparing EPDs.
HeidelbergCement, Lehigh Cement’s global parent company, has committed to reducing 30% of its carbon emissions by 2025 and providing carbon-neutral concrete by 2050. EcoCem®PLUS is the latest of several new products recently developed to help achieve those goals.
Lehigh Cement acknowledges the importance of transparency as a critical step in sustainability leadership. For this reason, Lehigh Cement has been developing and publishing Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for its cement plants. “Much like food nutrition labels highlight calorific values, our plant and product-specific EPDs communicate the environmental impact through Global Warming Potential (GWP) for cement in a simple and easy-to-understand manner,” said Joerg Nixdorf, President of Lehigh Hanson’s Canada Region. “We were the first North American cement producer to create and publish a plant and product-specific EPD for our cement under the new and more stringent cement Product Category Rules (PCR). This work is providing concrete with the ability to reduce its embodied carbon in the built environment.”