NRMCA certifies five Graniterock plants’ Environmental Product Declarations

Northern California’s leading independent aggregate and concrete operator, Graniterock, has issued Environmental Product Declarations covering 30 mixes at three central and two transit mixed plants serving Silicon Valley and coastal markets south. National Ready Mixed Concrete Association certified the documents as an EPD Program Operator, adding them to a growing industry library hosted on its website. 17 EPD 300

Graniterock joins peers Central Concrete Supply and Cemex USA, which have issued EPD for ready mixed produced at select San Francisco Bay area plants. The 25-page Graniterock declaration covers 5- to 7-sack mixes, 3,000- to 6,000-psi design strength, with a range of portland cement-only, fly ash and/or slag cement binder blends. It augments the producer’s green building product development and promotion, and strengthens its case for customers targeting the U.S. Green Building Council’s new LEED v4 certification. A LEED v4 Materials & Resources section references rating point potential for projects where EPD accompany specified products. Northern California, and especially San Francisco, has one of the country’s tightest concentrations of architects and project owners stipulating LEED certification or a related benchmark, Architecture 2030 Challenge for Products.

As EPD Program Operator, NRMCA assists producers in life cycle assessment (LCA) of plant operations and product formulation; independent auditors then review the LCA against a standard Product Category Rule. NRMCA-certified EPD use the University of Washington College of Built Environment-hosted Carbon Leadership Forum PCR for Concrete.


LCA, carbon deployment, resilience topics highlight Concrete Sustainability Conference

The National Ready Mixed Concrete Association has finalized the agenda for the 10th annual International Concrete Sustainability Conference, May 12-14 in Miami. Sixty-plus experts will present the latest developments related to design, specifying, manufacturing, testing, construction, maintenance and research of concrete as they dovetail sustainability.

Keynote speakers and topics include: Miami-Dade Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources, Office of Sustainability Chief Nichole Hefty — Challenges of climate change and steps Miami-Dade County is taking to mitigate weather disasters; Federal Alliance for Safe Homes President and CEO Leslie Chapman-Henderson — Resilience on the Rise: A Report on the Disaster Safety and Mitigation Movement; and, Gensler Director of Sustainable Design Kirsten Ritchie — Growing demand for transparency and corporate social responsibility in the building sector.

Among other speakers and target topics are: Concrete Sustainability Hub Executive Director T. Reed Miller, Evaluating the Environmental Impact of Pavement-Vehicle Interaction using Life Cycle Assessment; University of New Brunswick Professor Michael Thomas, The Use of Reclaimed Fly Ash in Concrete; Texas State University researcher Jacob Ellis, Modeling the Life-Cycle Impact of Concrete through Comparative Life Cycle Analysis; Athena Sustainable Materials Institute Director Jamie Meil, Athena Impact Estimator for Highways – A Web-enabled Environmental Life Cycle Assessment Software for Assessing Regional Materials Manufacturing, Roadway Construction, Use and Rehabilitation Life Cycle Stages; and, Argos USA Research Engineer Daniel Duque, Beyond EPDs: Using LCA Models and Data to Develop Sustainable Cements and Concretes.

Also on the agenda: Lafarge Research Scientist Matthieu Horgnies, An Innovative Depolluting Concrete Doped with Activated Carbon to Enhance Air Quality; Walter P. Moore Project Manager Dirk Kestner, Concrete Specifications and Whole Building LCA in LEED V4 – A Case Study; Headwaters Resources Researcher Rafic Minkara, Fly Ash Sustainability: Technologies to Mitigate the Impact of Sorbent Injection on Product Quality; CarbonCure Technologies Vice President of Technology Development Sean Monkman, Using Carbon Dioxide as a Beneficial Admixture in Ready-Mixed Concrete; Holcim (US) Inc. Senior Technical Service Engineer Tim Cost, Enhanced Cementitious Efficiency in Sustainable Concrete Mixtures with PLC – Influence of the Chemical and Physical Properties of PLCs and SCMs; Lehigh U.S Marketing & Technical Services Manager Larry Rowland, Resilience Matters; and, MIT researcher Joshua Hester, Streamlining Life Cycle Assessments of Residential Construction.

Cosponsor of the conference is Iberoamerican Federation of Ready Mixed Concrete (FIHP). A complete list of speakers and additional details about the conference are available at www.concretesustainabilityconference.org.