2012-6-19  Source: WBCSD

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)'s Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) has marked 10 years of progress with the release of its 2012 Progress Report. The report provides a snapshot of the Initiative¡¦s achievements and an outlook on the future sustainability challenges the cement industry faces.

Moving on to the second decade of the 21st century, businesses are not only expected to manage their own response to sustainability challenges but also to help society deal with wider issues remarks Philippe Fonta, Managing Director of the CSI. The CSI Progress Report talks about how the cement industry has changed significantly since 2002 and the CSI has been successful in adding value and making contribution to sustainable solutions through the development of transparent and commonly agreed methodologies, and by facilitating the sharing of good practices among members.

Coinciding with the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), the 2012 CSI Progress Report underlines the role the cement industry has to play towards achieving a more sustainable future. Nine key issues are explored by the Initiative ranging from historical areas of industry focus, such as climate protection, to new and emerging issues such as water. Here are the nine key issues:

• Safety
• Climate protection
• Fuels and raw materials use
• Air emissions
• Local impacts on land and communities
• Water
• Supply chain management
• Sustainability with concrete
• Working with others
•  

The Progress Report explains how the CSI has made important advances in collaborating with member companies to drive forward achievements on these key issues. Working together, CSI member companies are improving health and safety conditions by eliminating incidents leading to injuries and fatalities, managing and reducing CO2 and other air emissions of the cement sector as a whole by effective measurement and reduction measures. The CSI has established itself as one of the world's leading sector focused initiatives with a strong compliance culture in terms of understanding, measuring and reporting performance. As a cornerstone of their work, CSI member companies believe there is a strong business case for the pursuit of sustainable development, and that, in addition to their respective individual commitments and achievements, collective action by business is crucial to create a sustainable future.

Moving on to the next decade, the challenge now is to maintain this level of focus and rigour on existing activities, and at the same time, address emerging issues such as water and supply chain management. This Progress Report maps out how the CSI intends to achieve this across the next decade.

Interactive version of the report is available online (csiprogress2012.org) and follows up on the CSI¡¦s 2002 Agenda for Action which was created by the founding members of the WBCSD to provide a program of work for the initiative. More details are available on the CSI website.