Investment in UK manufacture
Our commitment to UK manufacture gives you an environmental advantage. We are the lowest producer of carbon dioxide per tonne of cement, five per cent better than the industry average.
Our product range is under constant review and new innovations are being introduced that further reduce environmental impact, improve performance and help make the builders’ life easier.
Air Quality
Castle is 50% better than the industry average in terms of environmental burden, a measure of the combined impacts of non-carbon emissions on the environment. |
|
Alternative raw materials and fuels
Up to 60% of the energy for our kilns is from biomass and other waste fuels and recycled sources against an industry average of 15%. For every tonne of cement produced, We recover 130kg of waste through its use as raw material or fuel.
For more information on our alternative fuels.
Alternative fuel
Sustainability Review 2007
In this review of environmental performance, Castle is pleased to be able to report further overall progress in our contribution to sustainable development.
Inside this issue:
- Reporting continued improvement
- Providing cement
- Climate protection
- Fuels and raw materials
- Emissions reduction
- Employee health and safety
- Local impacts
- Internal business processes
- Please click on the link below to download the review.
Works sustainability
We were the first UK cement producer to carry out annual environmental audits of our sites.
Alternative fuels have been burnt at Ketton and Ribblesdale since the 1990s. The first to be introduced was Cemfuel. This is a highly specified product that includes methanol, ethanol and acetone extracted during the recycling of everyday products such as printing inks, nail varnish remover and paint thinners.
Our works are also helping to overcome the nationwide problem of used car tyre disposal. As well as recovering energy, use of tyres helps also to solve a national waste management problem because 40 million of them are scrapped in the UK every year and disposal is a major headache. The intense heat in the kiln system means that tyres are completely consumed without creating black smoke or fumes.
In 2001, we announced a £4 million investment at Ketton to build a new plant to process an alternative fuel known as Profuel which is made from materials such as paper that cannot be recycled, low-chlorine plastics and off-cuts from nappy and carpet manufacture.This can replace up to 40 per cent of the coal previously used in Ketton’s kilns and at full capacity the factory can save 70,000 tonnes of this finite fuel each year.
The new kiln at Padeswood puts north east Wales on the map with the most modern cement producing works in the world. It is the first in the UK to be built especially to use some of the new generation of clean fuels being developed for the industry.
Ribblesdale also uses Agricultural Waste Derived Fuel, (AWDF) It is fibrous in appearance, feels like damp sand and is produced by sterilising and grinding abattoir waste. Previously this waste would have been buried in landfill sites.
In keeping with its position as an industry leader, Ribblesdale was the first plant in the UK to introduce this fuel. It is widely used in the European cement industry and Castle was able to draw on the experience existing within parent company HeidelbergCement before its introduction.
Productive use of other wastes is also high on our agenda at Ribblesdale. Cement kiln dust (CKD) is removed from the cement manufacturing process for quality control reasons. Much is returned to the manufacturing process to replace other raw materials but, in recent years, CKD from Ribblesdale has been used to stabilise and create fertile soil on spoil heaps at Silverwood Colliery in Yorkshire. The CKD is alkaline and the coal spoil acidic so the two are mixed with a suitable biosolid – such as sewage sludge - to neutralise the acidity and add nutrients.