SAMI Bitumen Technologies’ Australian-first Environmental Product Declarations for bitumen binders are providing greater transparency around the environmental properties of the company’s products.
It’s SAMI Bitumen Technologies’ belief that you can’t manage what you can’t measure.
It’s a pioneering approach for a company that’s inspired and developed many sustainable solutions for the bitumen and binder space, across the world.
Sebastien Chatard, General Manager – SAMI Bitumen Technologies says the company has very unambiguous sustainability ambitions.
“As part of the COLAS Group, SAMI is committed to reducing its carbon footprint by 46.5 per cent for scope one and two emissions, and 30 per cent for scope 3A by 2030 based on 2019 emissions,” he says. “Sustainability and carbon footprint reduction is at the core of our activities and products, it’s also a major focus for our research and development.
“All of the products that we’re producing, inventing or developing are aligned with these targets. We’re not just looking at the carbon emission or footprint of the product in its initial phase, we’re looking at the whole-of-life embodied carbon footprint.”
In order to ascertain a holistic understanding of the company’s carbon reduction efforts, SAMI Bitumen Technologies sought the services of start2see, an environmental consultancy specialising in life cycle assessments, to begin the necessary process to achieve Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for 18 different bitumen binders.
EPDs are standardised documents that communicate the environmental impacts of products, providing transparency around environmental performance and compliance.
Rob Rouwette, Director of start2see says EPDs are more than just documents. They’re tools for understanding, improving, and communicating environmental performance.
“Markets are asking more and more for this information because they want to see more transparency about the environmental impacts of the products and materials that they use,” he says.
“After determining the scope of the EPD assessment, we start mapping the value chain of the products involved. This is followed by data collection, which involves analysing production processes and collecting data on energy consumption, material flows, waste generation and site-specific emissions.
“From a data collection point of view, one of the first things we look at is what are these products? What’s their composition and how much raw material goes into them? As well as what does the production process and supply chain look like?”
“Using this data, we analyse the environmental hotspots in the life cycle of a product. Furthermore, we benchmarked SAMI’s four production plants and outlined how they performed against each other. This information helps to establish where improvements can and are being made.”
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The process is captured in an extensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) background report, which undergoes independent verification and ultimately results in the verified EPD document that is published by EPD Australasia.
All up, the process took two years. But Gerard Gnanaseelan, Technical Manager – SAMI Bitumen Technologies says the certification was well worth it.
“It’s a process that creates a chain reaction,” he says. “When we promote our products, there’s always questions from our customers, seeking a better understanding of whether there’s going to be a positive impact on environment.
“Now we can provide that information, through a standardised document that’s accepted and used across the sector.”
He adds that the process has created a number of growth opportunities and key learnings for the company internally.
“It’s a learning process for the entire organisation on how to adjust our behaviour and our level of understanding, when it comes to our environmental impact,” he says.
Chatard says the life cycle assessment also provided surprising results.
“Before we undertook the EPD process, we thought that our SAMIBioPrime product was carbon neutral, but after accurate calculation and measurement, we found out that it was actually carbon negative,” he says.
“It also helped to validate our in-house measurements. As an example, our calculations indicated that SAMIGreen has a 60 per cent reduction in carbon footprint. The findings from the EPD arrived at that number, too.”
The expert guidance provided by start2see and EPD Australasia also helped to discover meaningful results, Chatard adds.
“It’s important to have that consultant beside you to know all these details and go through it correctly. If you don’t have the official, certified EPDs and only in-house calculations, there is a danger of misinformation. Most of the time you don’t have the knowledge to set those benchmarks and apply that knowledge correctly,” he says.
Rouwette says that receiving an EPD certification should only mark the beginning of a company’s sustainability journey.
“The benefit of doing an EPD is that it’s solidified by the independent verification, and therefore it’s a document that you can use that shows ‘yeah, we’ve actually done the homework’ and we’re happy to stand behind that,” he says.
“The best value you’ll get out of an EPD is by not just completing the process, but also then making that part of a larger, broader sustainability strategy.”
Future performance
Chatard says SAMI Bitumen Technologies will use the learnings and certifications accrued to further push the company’s pledge to sustainable outcomes.
This includes – but is not limited to – constantly reviewing the company’s entire product range, support for the development of low-carbon products and finding a balance between product performance and a reduction in carbon footprint.
While it may seem easier said than done, it’s a challenge that SAMI Bitumen Technologies is more than willing to accept, says Gnanaseelan.
“We’re the first company to publish bituminous product EPDs in Australasia, but it’s just the first step,” he says.
“It has to involve the whole of society, our customer base and government. They all need to make a big decision on whether we are going to live the way we are now, or if we’re going to make a change.”
This article was originally published in the May edition of our magazine. To read the magazine, click here.
