Concrete: Environmental Management – Whole of Life

The production of concrete and of concrete structures consumes large amounts of resources, such as water, energy, cement and steel and emit large amounts of CO2 in their production processes.

ISO 13315-1:2012, Environmental management for concrete and concrete structures – Part 1: General Principles, aims to provide the basic rules on environmental management for concrete and to:

• Help owners, designers, manufacturers, constructors, users, certification bodies and environmental standard developers.
• Contribute to continual improvement of the environmental impacts resulting from concrete-related activities.  It ensures consistency with the ISO 14000 series on environmental management.

The standard provides a framework and basic rules on environmental management related to concrete.  This includes the assessment of environmental impacts and methods of implementing environmental improvement.  The standard addresses the entire life cycle of concrete structures, including –

• Design, production, recycling and disposal of concrete
• Building, use and demolition.