The benefits of sustainable business practices are well documented. The Canadian Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute has provided the tools for its member plants that will have a measurable impact on their environmental and economic performance, using a customised industry software, the Sustainable Precast Concrete Benchmark Calculator (v1.0). The ultimate benefit is to the facility owner who can use the information to identify environmental “hotspots” and make informed decisions about the environmental impact to their transportation infrastructure project. The software, developed for CPCI by the Athena Sustainable Materials Institute (ASMI), enables manufacturers to measure their “cradle-to-gate” life cycle environmental footprint. Once a manufacturing facility enters their raw material usage, electricity, natural gas, gas, diesel, heavy fuel oil and liquefied propane gas usage the software uses ASMI’s life cycle inventory database to calculate a set of sustainability indicators – global warming potential (GWP), total primary energy (PE) and water usage for the plant. The facility, as part of the overall CPCI Sustainable Plant Program, also self-evaluates and reports their environmental performance indicators – dust, noise and waste materials. Participating plants report their tracked results to CPCI on a quarterly basis, the results of which are presented in an annual industry report. Individual plants are also provided a customised report on a quarterly basis for their own internal benchmarking. Specifiers and owners can request the sustainability impacts on a project basis and are
