Sustainability across Corus

By using recovered fuel oil as a chemical reductant in our blast furnace at Teesside Cast Products we have achieved a substantial reduction in our annual consumption of coke, with an associated CO2 saving equivalent to more than 25,000 tonnes per annum.

Thanks to improvements over recent years in raw material selection and process control, our by-products meet tight quality control requirements that enable them to be used as raw materials in sectors such as concrete and chemicals. Non-renewable primary raw materials are thereby displaced and conserved. For example, granulated slag from our blast furnaces is used as a clinker substitute in the concrete sector, reducing the extraction of virgin raw materials such as shales and limestone and reducing CO2 emissions at the same time. Similarly, steelmaking slags are used in well-established civil engineering and agricultural applications, ferrous chloride solution is used in water treatment, and tar and benzene are used within the chemicals sector.

Responsible procurement

Interest in responsible procurement grew during 2007 and Corus positioned itself at the forefront of a number of multi-stakeholder initiatives aimed at defining what responsible procurement means, both in a steel industry and a construction sector context. Our main collaboration has centred around a project being coordinated by the Eden Project, which has brought together representatives from throughout the constructional steel supply chain to define the key environmental and societal impacts throughout the life-cycle of a steel product and to explore objective criteria for assessing the sustainability of each supply chain. We have also contributed, through the Construction Products Association, to the work of the UK Building Research Establishment (BRE), which is aimed at developing a sustainability standard on responsible procurement of construction products.

As a large company we can use our size to influence our suppliers, and we expect them to have a high level of commitment to the environment. To support this principle we use an internet-based supplier assessment tool to help us to screen prospective suppliers and to encourage and monitor the improvement of existing suppliers.

Product stewardship

We believe that our responsibility for managing environmental impact goes beyond manufacturing. Downstream, the characteristics of our products, and the information that we provide to customers, can have a profound effect on the environmental performance of our products during their in-use and end-of-life phases.

Life-cycle assessment

Life-cycle inventory data is now available for 88% of our products. Using life-cycle assessment, we have also quantified the whole life performance of a number of our products and have published 40 environmental product declarations for construction products in partnership with our customers.

Corus RD&T has developed CLEAR, an extensive whole life-cycle assessment tool capable of analysing the environmental impact of a building. The tool has proven valuable, for example, we have used it to optimise the building envelope design of a large distribution facility and to evaluate the effect of different roofing options on the building’s overall energy requirements.

End-of-life guidance

We have produced a series of guidance documents to inform the market on best practice for the end-of-life of buildings clad with steel. The sustainability of a building in terms of its material usage, construction, occupation and end-of-life is becoming an ever more important consideration. This is driven by the desire to provide a better quality of life for people, whilst protecting the needs of future generations.