Scottish firm the first UK company to get an Environmental Product Declaration for their recycled aggregates

Sustainable resource management specialist Brewster Brothers has become the first in the UK to achieve an Environmental Product Declaration for their recycled aggregates. The intention of such declarations (EPDs) is to be able to report and compare independently verified data about the environmental performance of companies’ products all the way from extraction to end of life. An EPD gives a firm’s customers access to accurate and transparent environmental impact data for their own sustainability reporting.

The EPD is achieved after first carrying out a Life Cycle Assessment. The Life Cycle Assessment is a way for a firm to evaluate its product’s environmental performance over its life. It typically takes into consideration the full chain from material extraction to manufactured product, the usage stage and then its end of life.

As well as the EPD, and in order to make it even easier for Brewster Brothers’ customers to assess the carbon savings of using their products versus virgin aggregates or other recycled equivalents, the firm has created its own carbon calculator which can be found here.

The Scottish government’s plan is for the nation to hit net-zero by 2045. As part of that journey the government’s also set a 2025 target to reduce total waste in Scotland by 15% compared to 2011 levels and to reduce the food we throw out by 33% against 2013 levels.

The construction, demolition and extraction industry generates 50% of Scotland’s waste, 40% of Scotland’s carbon emissions and is responsible for 50% of Scotland’s natural resource consumption. Recycling waste from the sector through Brewster Brothers’ wash plant recovers 100% of the soil, sand, gravel, and stone, which are reprocessed into high-value products for reuse.

Over the five years of its operation, Brewster Brothers’ plant near Livingston has diverted over 1 million tonnes of construction, demolition and excavation (CDE) waste from landfill and created more than 750,000 tonnes of recycled aggregates with a carbon saving of 20,000 tonnes.

To read the full article on High Growth Scotland, click here.