In September 2015, 193 countries approved the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the United Nations General Assembly. Some objectives that make up the so-called 2030 Agenda, an ambitious universal agenda that places the human rights of all people at the center, leaving no one behind.

Among the objectives of this development agenda, one of the main ones is to fight against climate change and the fight to reduce the production of greenhouse gases.

The climatic footprint and the concrete.

It is undeniable; the development of modern societies would not have been possible without the use of concrete. In fact, today it is the most used material on the planet. To get an idea of what we are talking about, it takes less time in the world to fill 19,000 concrete bathtubs than the time it takes to read this article.

In short, concrete is a fundamental part of modern development and of the world we know today.

Such importance and volume makes us understand that it is essential to limit the environmental impact of a material to which it is calculated, taking all the phases of production, responsible for between 4% and 8% of the world’s carbon dioxide (CO2).

At Frumecar, we are very aware of this and we work tirelessly to reduce the carbon footprint of its concrete plants.

To achieve this, for more than a decade we have been applying key strategies to reduce the carbon footprint and obtain a high impact in the climate adaptation of construction in our plants. We have been aware since our inception that our products must meet the needs of the present construction without compromising future generations.

These plants must have as their main objective to reduce the environmental impact of construction:

– Recycling concrete waste.

– Improving the energy efficiency of all processes.

– Minimizing resource consumption.

Recycling.

One of the fundamental strategies to reduce this impact is the recycling of the material that allows us to increase its useful use. Recycled concrete is made with recycled aggregates and aggregates that originate from the grinding of waste from other infrastructures. In this sense, it must be taken into account that a concrete construction does not usually exceed 30 years of useful life in response to market demands and in this way that figure is considerably increased, causing a considerable reduction in the manufacture of new material.

That is why at Frumecar we are carrying out the following actions:

• Add our recyclers designed and optimized for this function.
• Include molds for recycling waste, made with current materials or with new materials from recycled sources.
• Use the functions of K2 for the recycling of work leftovers such as new concrete.

Energy efficiency.

Another fundamental strategy to combat the climate footprint is to optimize all the processes involved from an energy consumption point of view, for which Frumecar is developing the following improvements:

• Inclusion of an ECO mode in the plant-operating model to reduce energy consumption as much as possible. Including progressive starters to achieve a low consumption mode in concrete mixers, tape starters and, above all, allowing a more exact control of errors in the dosing of materials, saving up to 10 kilos of cement per loading cycle and adjusting to minimal waste of other raw materials.

• Change of traditional engines for the new maximum performance models indicated by the regulations.
• Using an advanced pressure control system in the water pumps that allows optimization of operating time, reducing start-up and stop cycles and achieving energy savings of up to 15% in the daily operation of this system.

Reduce resource consumption.

Last but not least, the reduction of resources through innovation and the latest technological advances applied to concrete plants, allow resources to be optimized, being more competitive and much more friendly with the environmental impact. At Frumecar, our innovation department works to offer the best solutions such as:

• The intelligent control system of Frumecar K2 is capable of handling the dosages of all raw materials with maximum efficiency and effectiveness, managing to reduce dosage errors to less than 1%, avoiding the waste of resources that are so valuable for our environment.

• Plants ready to work completely digitized, eliminating paper consumption.
• Our plants have a folding system that optimizes transport to destination and drastically reduces the carbon footprint of delivery to destination.
• The Frumecar Cloud system allows, through our Care maintenance application, to extend the life cycle of our products by up to 20%, achieving an increase in the useful life of existing and newly created machinery. For this reason, the Frumecar plants are becoming increasingly important among professionals in the construction sector.
• We carry out a study of the carbon footprint of our plants that provides information on the estimated greenhouse gas emissions of all the materials manufactured, transported and assembled for a project, and the maintenance and end-of-life costs of the materials.
• Continuous improvement of our production system, minimizing raw material resources and properly managing the waste generated.
• Improvement of our facilities, contributing to energy savings and taking advantage of natural resources, such as sunlight, both in direct use for lighting, and in the transformation into photovoltaic panels.

In short, at Frumecar we strive every day to meet current needs in a sector as strategic and key to development as concrete, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs, guaranteeing a balance between economic growth and preservation of biodiversity.