NRMCA Producer Member Reduces Cement GWP

As a leading Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) Program Operator for the concrete industry, NRMCA recently verified two EPDs by California-based Producer member CalPortland. The EPDs report the impacts for different cement products produced at the company's Oro Grand and Mojave, CA, facilities. The verified cement products include:

NRMCAEPD:20038 - This EPD reports information for Types I/II/V, Type III, Type IL and plastic cements produced at Oro Grande, CA.
NRMCAEPD:20039 - This EPD reports information for Type I/II/V and Type IL cements produced at Mojave, CA.

When compared to CalPortland’s previous EPDs from these facilities, the results across all cements indicate a range of reduction in global warming potential (i.e., embodied carbon) from 3.6% to 12.5%. This shows excellent progress and benefits the carbon footprint of downstream concrete mixes. CalPortland’s EPD was developed by Athena Sustainable Materials Institute and verified by Sustainable Solutions Corporation (SSC).

The trend in reporting environmental, social and governance practices is growing and, with environmental impact criteria being discovered in green building construction documents and specifications, procurement decisions are leaning beyond price and performance. Where raw material suppliers demonstrate a lower embodied carbon for their customers will provide them increasing business opportunities in the future.

To date, the North American ready mixed concrete industry, including material suppliers, has invested into 80 verified EPDs with >32,000 products/mixes and is the leading material industry that reports environmental impacts.

Integral to the Build With Strength campaign, NRMCA promotes Strength Through Transparency for member and industry competitiveness in the green building marketplace and the trends toward product and company transparency. NRMCA-verified EPDs can be found here.

For support, training, sustainability strategy planning or product development, contact James Bogdan at jbogdan@nrmca.org or 412-420-4138.

National Ready Mixed Concrete Association