After success in 13 other countries, ECOPact, Holcim’s low carbon concrete range, is now being released in Australia.
The concrete is made using varying portions of supplementary cementitious materials, which include fly ash and slag cement, and can reduce embodied carbon emissions by up to 60 per cent compared to standard concrete. It will be available in a range from 30 to 100 per cent reduced carbon emissions overall.
Holcim stated that if a structure like the Sydney Harbour Bridge was made using ECOPact, it would save the equivalent of removing 14,700 cars from the road for one year.
Holcim Australia & New Zealand chief executive officer George Agriogiannis said the company is dedicated to low carbon concrete solutions.
“I am proud to announce our commitment to help our customers reduce the embodied carbon of concrete construction,” Agriogiannis said. “We pride ourselves on being a solutions provider. ECOPact and ECOPactZERO are a substantial shift towards sustainable construction in Australia.”
ECOPactZERO uses accredited carbon offset from Climate Active to ensure zero carbon emissions are added to Earth’s atmosphere in the making of the concrete.
ECOPact is supported by Holcim’s ViroDecs, which is the company’s Environmental Product Declaration (EPD).
An EPD is an independently verified and registered document which provides transparency for buyers into the life-cycle environmental impact of materials used in a given product.
Chief executive officer of the Green Building Council of Australia David Rooney said a product’s EPD is becoming extremely important as the information and sustainability ages merge.
“We support the development of EPDs in the market as they represent verified, transparent environmental impact data, and have a transformational impact by enabling the built environment to understand its impact on a deeper level,” Rooney said.
ECOPact has already been successful in Europe and was released throughout the Americas last year. To date, it is available in Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany (as EvoPact), India (as ACC), Italy, Mexico, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
It’s now Australia’s turn to receive the benefits of ECOPact, from a company that dedicates 50 per cent of its innovation resources to low carbon solutions, with 40 per cent of its patents currently in this area.