ENABLING A CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Enabling a circular economy is one of our top priorities as we aim to eliminate waste, a pressing issue in Hong Kong, and to ultimately decouple development from consumption of natural resources, in our operations.

1. Efficient use of primary raw materials
In our upstream activities we ensure the efficient use of the primary raw materials that extracts from our stone quarries. Our principle is we take only what we need, since anything extracted from nature must be fully utilized. We also put in place green practices such as quarry restoration, dust suppression measures, and other pollution controls at our quarry site in order to eliminate the environmental impacts.
2. Waste & wastewater recycling
Concrete waste and solid waste extracted from plant washout are the major sources of waste generated in the concrete manufacturing process. We equip the concrete reclaimer, filter press and the wastewater treatment system in our concrete batching plants. These facilities enabled us to reclaim usable materials from the wastewater and turn them into filling materials for civil works or other engineering usage. The filtrated wastewater is also recycled for trucks and site cleaning.
3. Concrete waste solution
For unexpected reasons concrete can be returned from construction sites, and if not handled in a timely manner the returned concrete will be disposed of at landfills. One solution for tackling this challenge starts with reducing waste at its source. Our Customer Service Centre offers our customers, with the support from our technical and logistics teams, solutions to minimize the volume of concrete returned from construction sites due to over-ordering or other concreting problems. For unavoidable concrete waste, the Recycle Concrete Treatment Machine we introduced from Japan turns the concrete waste into recycled aggregates which can be used in producing concrete.
4. Products with waste materials
The application of waste/recycled materials from other industrial processes such as fly ash and silica fume into concrete reduces the consumption of Portland Cement as well as the embodied Carbon. While we continue using these recycled materials in our concrete products, the construction of GGBS production line in our sister company, Green Island Cement’s Tap Shek Kok plant in 2020 made this cement replacement material available locally. We supplied more than a thousand cubic meters of GGBS concrete with a replacement ratio up to 60% for Grade 60 concrete, for the construction of the GGBS plant in Tap Shek Kok which has an annual production capacity up to 360 kilo tonnes. The incorporation of GGBS can further lower the carbon footprint as well as improving the product durability and a prolonged service life.
5. Innovative green concrete solutions
The design and construction of built environments must become more resilient to the impacts of climate change, while also cost-effectively meeting the needs from population growth. We offer the market innovative concrete solutions that reduce the embodied environmental impacts in construction and building in-use stages.
  • Self-compacting concrete : Reduce the nuisance that may occur from the concreting process such as noise nuisance to surroundings and has the benefit of making the concreting process less labour intensive.
  • High grade tremie mix: Enhance the loading of the building for flexible design and accelerate the overall project progress.
  • Fast set self-flow lightweight concrete : Enables the casting at inaccessible locations.
  • Heat controlled lightweight concrete: Provides enough strength for loading thus avoids the distortion of cast-in items.
  • Other value-added products with durability performance: Prolongs the service life of the structures up to 120 years with minimal maintenance
Water Conservation - The WASH Pledge

Water is the major ingredient for producing our concrete, we also consume water for our daily operational use. Water pollution is another challenging topic particularly in densely populated cities like Hong Kong.

Within the reporting period, we signed the WASH pledge which was initiated by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). Being one of the WASH Pledge signatories, we committed to implementing access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene at all our sites, as well as preventing water pollution in the communities where we operate. We carried out an annual assessment to ensure the provision of international best WASH practices at all our sites. Under the public health crisis of COVID-19, the WASH practices had enabled us to maintain a high standard of workplace sanitation and hygiene which helped prevent the disease from entering our workplaces. The wastewater treatment facilities that recycles the wastewater that we generated removed the pollutants from the water discharge thus preventing the polluted water from entering any public places and water bodies.