Environment
Environmental Commitment
Our commitment to protecting and preserving the environment begins with our Environmental
Health & Safety Policy, which establishes the corporate expectation for performance
and individual accountability. Conducting business in an environmentally sustainable
manner with minimal impact to our communities is a company priority.
Our environmental awareness training programs educate our managers and employees
in the environmental impacts of their jobs and in the methods to sustain the company’s
high level of environmental performance.
Our EH&S staff works closely with company management to keep training current, audit
operations for compliance and track progress in our sustainability initiatives.
A Greener Company – Evironmental Sustainability
Boston Sand & Gravel is working on a century of continuous service and creating
a greener company as we reach the centennial milestone. We launched a Green Plan,
a strategy for ensuring that our operations are environmentally sustainable and
that our carbon footprint in the environment is reduced. The focus of BS&G’s Green
Plan is to support our customers with materials for green construction while reducing
our energy, fuel and water consumption in the production of those products. The
Green Plan builds on the Company’s history of environmental conservation from land
reclamation and hydro-seeding in mining facilities to storm water collection and
reuse in ready mix concrete production.
Green Construction
As a member of the US Green Building Council
we are familiar with the USGBC’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)
program for sustainable building. We support our customers by providing LEED conforming
products for “green building” and assist with calculations and documentation required
for LEED Material certification points. We are proud to have a LEED Accredited Professional
on our technical/sales team.
Green Star Certification
Our main ready mix concrete plant in Boston achieved Green Star Certification through
the through the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association.
This industry specific certification, developed in partnership with the US Environmental
Protection Agency, highlights environmental performance and measurable achievements
in environmental sustainability. BS&G is the second company in the US to have achieved
Green Star Recognition and the Boston plant is the first ready mix plant east of
Mississippi certified to this standard.
Green Initiatives
All our facilities have adopted green initiatives for sustainable business practice. Some of these include:
- Renewable Energy/Solar – a 109 kW solar energy system on the roof of our
primary maintenance facility in Boston produces 75% of the facility’s power requirements.
This installation, which supports city and state renewable energy programs - Solar
Boston and Commonwealth Solar - will save 120,000KWH of power on the energy grid
and 90 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
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- Water Conservation – We have installed water collection and recycling systems
at all our MA ready mix and NH aggregate plants to reduce water withdrawal from
municipal supplies, wells and rivers. Our Boston facility alone conserves nearly
500,000 gal of water each month by recycling and reusing gray water from its concrete
processing operations.
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- Land Conservation – Hydro-seeding and planting are common practice at our
mining locations to restore the mined land for other beneficial use. Our facilities,
where appropriate, are involved in state Forest Stewardship programs on forested
land.
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- Recycling – Boston Sand recycling programs include metals, electronics, mercury-containing
devices and used oil products and our ready mix concrete operations recycle return concrete
from construction jobs into usable products, such as concrete blocks and fill for
road bed.
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- Waste Oil for Fuel Value - As part of our waste reduction, re-use and recycling
program, instead of shipping waste motor oil off site for disposal, we have permitted
and installed waste oil burners at facilities with maintenance garages. Reusing
the waste oil in this manner saves heat fuel and diesel for disposal.
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- Energy and Greenhouse Gas Reduction – We are implementing energy reduction
measures for all our operations – stationary and mobile - to reduce their carbon
footprint.
 Our facilities are reducing electrical consumption
through an active program to replace lighting and upgrade process equipment such
as compressors and motors with more energy efficient models. In Massachusetts we
were nominated as a mentor company and are a member of the Governor’s Clean Energy
Challenge, with a pledge to reduce carbon emissions at our Boston location 10% from
a 2008 baseline by 2012. (http://www.governorscleanenergychallenge.com/).
Our energy reduction program has also qualified us to join the EPA Green Power Partnership.
We are also actively working on reducing our diesel consumption of our fleet. Under
a program sponsored by the NH Department of Environmental services, we were awarded
a grant to install Auxiliary Power Units for the locomotives for our shortline railroad,
New Hampshire Northcoast. These units will reduce diesel emissions during locomotive
idling.
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- Demand Response Participation – Our larger Massachusetts ready mix facilities enrolled
in an energy Demand Response program with the regional power grid and EnerNOC. This
program requires that we develop emergency energy reduction plans and demonstrate
our ability to curtail our energy when called on by the power grid to help avert
a regional energy black out. The program also provides online electrical measurement
equipment which enables us to monitor our electrical consumption on a real time
basis and optimize our energy conservation measures.
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Green Awards and Recognition
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- Mayor’s Green Business Award 2008. BS&G’s energy reduction and solar energy installation
at its Boston maintenance facility resulted in a Green Business award presented
by the Mayor of Boston.
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- Boston Business Journal Green Business Award for Energy Design. The PV solar energy
system on the BS&G maintenance facility roof achieved optimized solar efficiency
in design with the mounting of south-facing solar panels on a north facing roof. For more information, visit http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2009/04/20/daily26.html
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