Sources: Progressive Planet Solutions, Kamloops, British Columbia; CP staff
A Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) commitment of up to $4.6 million, phased through 2028, positions Progressive Planet Solutions to proceed with a pilot plant for PozGlass, a supplementary cementitious material. The company’s patent-pending process entails sodium extraction from post-consumer, soda-lime glass; combining sodium and carbon dioxide to form sodium carbonate; and, conversion of sodium carbonate to PozGlass and precipitated calcium carbonate—the latter a candidate for blending with clinker during portland cement finishing. Lafarge Canada Inc., the top concrete producer across the Prairie Provinces and British Columbia, holds a purchase agreement for up to 3,500 metric tons/year of PozGlass pilot plant output.
Progressive Planet envisions a two-phase schedule for the facility. The first is to include dry processing equipment to remove all contaminants from locally sourced glass while creating the coarse PozGlass base powder plus CanBlast, a crystalline silica-free sand blasting media whose production Progressive Planet has outsourced to a third-party the past decade. Scheduled for a late-2026 completion, the pilot plant’s second phase will see build out of wet grinding assemblies to transform coarse glass powder to branded SCM.
“PozGlass is our solution to reducing the carbon footprint of cement production. The funding allows us to innovate, reduce emissions, and create value from post-consumer glass, a material that has been historically misallocated and considered waste,” says Progressive Planet CEO Steve Harpur. “Having the support of SDTC and Canada’s largest cement company, Lafarge Canada, reinforces that PozGlass is a relevant and promising solution to decarbonizing the production of cement.”
“With traditional sources of supplementary cementitious materials in decline globally, innovation is more critical than ever. Companies like Progressive Planet are providing new options to reduce the embodied carbon of building materials through circular economy advancements,” adds Lafarge Canada (West) CEO Brad Kohl, tipping his hat to the Government of Canada for it ongoing support of emerging technologies through the National Research Council of Canada-administered SDTC.
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