[CemExec] Howard Klee, WBCSD (Part 1 of 2)

CW:  What would you consider to be one of the CSI's greatest achievements to date?  For example, if you had to pick one project to tell our readers about, what would it be?

HK: It is difficult to select one project from the many the CSI has tackled over the years.  The CSI member companies have made significant contributions to managing climate change, to improving safety and to improving quarry rehabilitation practices to name three areas.  But I think the biggest benefit of the CSI is in the process of bringing together a global network of leading companies to give serious thought to, followed by serious action on, a number of current and future issues faced in their industry.  The geographic diversity of the CSI, the intense debates and discussions held, and the substantive work completed has helped ensure thoughtful and robust contributions to a more sustainable industry.  Our global database called ÔÇ£Getting the Numbers Right (GNR)ÔÇØ is one contribution.  Our climate policy modeling work is another.

At the same time, we agreed at the beginning of this program, to make as much of our work as possible available to the rest of the industry and encourage its use.  For example, the CO2 accounting protocol mentioned earlier is now used by 80% of the global cement industry.

CW:  What are the different areas within the cement sector that you consider priorities from a sustainability perspective?

HK: Our initial work identified six key areas that were likely to have a strong impact and where we could begin work immediately:  Climate Protection, Fuel and Raw Material Use, Employee Safety, Airborne Emissions (SO_x, NO_x, dust and micro-pollutants), Quarry rehabilitation and management, and communications. We developed a set of key performance indicators so we could track our progress in the first five of these.  They are available on the website, www.wbcsdcement.org and in our most recent progress report, www.cisprogress2007.org.

While much of the initial work focused on understanding and reducing the ÔÇ£footprintÔÇØ from cement making, we are now starting to add a focus on the sustainability contributions concrete can make as a construction material.  Our first work in this area was a recent report on recycling concrete.