Lehigh Hanson parent at home with Sustainably Managed Companies

HeidelbergCement AG of Germany ranks 37 among 100 Sustainably Managed Companies that the Wall Street Journal recognized in its mid-October edition. The concrete, aggregate and cement giant scores 73.2 overall on a list where such scores range from 78.8 (#1 Sony) to 71.1 (#100 International Paper). HeidelbergCement ranks in upper and lower quartiles in the list’s four categories: Environment (#8), Human Capital (#43), Social Capital (#86) and Business Model & Innovation (#71).

Thorough operating and environmental metrics disclosures contribute to HeidelbergCement’s ranking on the Wall Street Journal Sustainably Managed Companies list.

The Sustainably Managed Companies ranking reflects a review of those category metrics among 5,500-plus public companies across the globe. Editors combined scores on up to 165 data items with an analysis of coverage in upward of 9,000 media sources. Overall scores were generated with artificial intelligence plus validation by the paper’s Environment, Social and Governance Research Team. “Scores take a broad view of sustainability that assess a company’s ability to create value over the long term, using criteria considered most financially relevant as defined by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board,” editors observe.

In its current Sustainability Report, HeidelbergCement underscores progress on a leading environmental metric: A 22 percent reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in 2019 cement production against 1990 baseline levels—toward a 30 percent cut by 2030. As the world’s top ready mixed producer, the company also aims to leverage supplementary cementitious materials and carbon capture or use technologies to attain a carbon-neutral threshold for concrete by 2050.

“Our sustainability goals apply across the Group in more than 50 countries,” HeidelbergCement Chairman Dominik von Achten observes. “We want to continue being a good neighbor to those living in the vicinity of our more than 3,000 locations worldwide, and further decrease the ecological footprint of our business activity with ambitious research and development. We want to shape the future of our company in dialogue with shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers, and business partners as well as with the local communities near our operational sites and society as a whole.”

Other construction materials or construction players among Sustainability Managed Companies are Siam Cement, Thailand (#24); Cie. de Saint-Gobain, Paris (#20); and, (San Francisco-based Webcor Builders’ parent) Obayashi Corp., Japan (#82). Among familiar capital equipment brands on the ranking are Caterpillar Inc. (#19) and ABB (#30).