Coinciding with the freezing temperatures and threat of snow is the news that at Aggregate Industries we have upgraded our responsible sourcing status to excellent for UK manufactured building materials. The certificates are publically available on the Green Book Live website.
So what does this mean for our customers? What does it mean for us?
Let me start with the benefits to our customers. BREEAM is the leading sustainability rating system in the UK building sector. The most recent incarnation of this system is the 2011 version which has a specific question relating to Responsible Sourcing (as did the 2008 version). The significant difference is that all four possible ratings (pass, good, very good and excellent) are in different tiers - so there is a tangible advantage to using products that are rated excellent rather than very good.
Sustainable materials in building
Aggregate Industries was the first company to achieve excellent for ready-mixed concrete and now offers the most comprehensive range of excellent rated products in the market.
This achievement shows how far we have come as a business over the past few years in particular. The reporting and measuring of non-financial data will always be an issue for organisations which is why we seek external verification to give us more confidence in the numbers that we report, eg, waste to landfill. The responsible sourcing audits reviewed site specific data as part of the assessment; the focus on non-financial data has certainly paid off.
What next? There may not be any higher ratings possible in the current version of the standard, but there are many things I want to achieve and with the help and support of the people in our business we will get better and stronger at addressing sustainability.