ASACERT is a Certification Body recognized by the Concrete Sustainability Council (CSC), recognized by international systems for assessing the sustainability of buildings: BREEAM, LEED, DNGB, OGNI.

The CSC is a global certification system, created by the world’s largest cement and concrete producers within the Global Cement and Concrete Association, for responsibly sourced concrete, designed to help businesses gain insight into the level to which Concrete, cement and aggregate companies operate, considering the entire industrial process, with respect to the three pillars of sustainability: economic, social and environmental.

WHO CAN REQUEST CERTIFICATION

All plants that produce and are suppliers of concrete – pre-mixed or prefabricated -, aggregates or cement can be subjected to certification. Concrete plants can obtain the CSC certificate, while suppliers (aggregates, cement) can obtain a “Supplier Certificate”.

WHY GET CERTIFIED

The objective of CSC certification is to promote transparency in the concrete sector and demonstrate how operators are minimizing impacts through responsible sourcing, be recognized by the main international systems for assessing the sustainability of buildings and financially evaluated in public green procurement policies .

THE REQUIREMENTS

Similar to other sustainability schemes, the criteria include some limited prerequisites which do not provide a score, but compliance with which is mandatory, and other requirements useful for calculating the final rating which is divided into four ascending classes: bronze, silver, gold, platinum .

To evaluate the requirements, 4 macro-areas are taken into consideration: management, environmental, social, economics. Each area contains a series of specific requirements, which evaluate a variety of aspects. The evaluation of the criteria is implemented by looking both at the concrete production process, by the manufacturer requesting certification, and at the cement and aggregates supply chain.

CRITERIA

This is a complex certification, which concerns the company as a whole and evaluates its entire operations in depth, not just the environmental aspects.

The scheme refers to sustainability in its three fundamental aspects:

• Environmental: full compliance with local regulations is observed and all actions are implemented, even if not strictly mandatory, aimed at reducing environmental impacts, both in terms of consumption of resources and potentially harmful emissions.
• Economic: includes verification of compliance with fair competition and the principles of correctness and quality of the product supplied
• Social: an example above all, respect for workers’ rights and regularity of wages and contributions towards them.

THE ADVANTAGES

Being certified is a guarantee of transparency, reliability and sustainable ethics certified by a third-party body such as ASACERT, for customers, businesses, designers and clients, both public and private.

Becoming part of a system that counts among its members important international business realities in the sector (including LafargeHolcim, the HeidelbergCement group, the Buzzi Unicem group), the main European industrial associations in the sector (for Italy Federbeton), as well as other types of organizations and subjects.

BE CERTIFIED

Thanks to many years of experience in the field of sustainability and the construction world, ASACERT deals with credibility recognized by the market and third party in the analysis and evaluation of the environmental aspects of activities of any size and sector and the related impacts on the environment, even in regarding building products.

ASACERT will verify the correspondence of the criteria established by the scheme with the production processes regarding the three macro-areas taken into consideration by CSC, issuing a certification recognized by the main international systems for the evaluation of the sustainability of buildings: BREEAM, LEED, DNGB, EVERY .

Based on the outcome of the checks carried out by ASACERT, having as their object the evidence presented by the requesting organisation, for the satisfaction of the various criteria of the scheme, the three-year “CSC Certificate” is issued, which is published in a list which can be consulted on the CSC website