Area 3
Resource Protection
- Waste management strategies conserve the environment
- HOCHTIEF projects safeguard water supplies
- Biodiversity in focus
In all projects, national as well as international, HOCHTIEF actively meets the challenges and obligations of protecting the environment. This requires heightened workforce awareness and knowledge of the issues involved. We see exercising responsibility toward the environment and conserving finite resources as part and parcel of our business. We aim to identify the environmental impacts of all projects and activities at an early stage and to reduce those impacts to a minimum. HOCHTIEF adopted a Group-wide environmental directive and environmental policy as early as 2003. More than 60 percent of our operational units are certified to the ISO 14001 international standard. For many projects, HOCHTIEF prepares detailed environment strategies and applies innovative ideas.
Waste: Reduce, reuse, recycle
A prime example is waste management and recycling. We are actively committed to returning waste to the economic cycle. Accordingly, separating waste is standard practice, not just in offices but on all HOCHTIEF construction sites throughout the world. In Germany, we achieve around a 90 percent recycling rate for construction waste. With infrastructure projects, we devise strategies at an early stage to minimize and reuse excavated material. One way we do this is by using material from tunnels in concrete for roadbuilding and other transportation projects.
In office, production, warehousing and laboratory facilities, HOCHTIEF Facility Management provides bins for waste separation. Our personnel check the bins and deliver the separately collected waste to an environmental services center where it is sorted on for later reuse. For this purpose, HOCHTIEF Facility Management is accredited in Germany as a waste management operator.
Our Australian subsidiary Leighton likewise works in many ways to reduce, reuse and recycle. One area the company slated for improvement was packaging, where it had too big a share of unrecoverable waste. The waste mountain has shrunk markedly with the use of recyclable materials. In many Leighton operating locations, such materials include
paper, aluminum, copper wire and other scrap metal. Office workers are required to use less paper, for instance, by sending faxes online and preferentially printing on both sides. Waste paper is disposed of in separate bins.
Protecting the environment is also a priority at Leighton Asia. In August 2007, the company signed a charter in this connection enshrining a total of seven commitments and eleven measures. Workers are required to turn off the engine on unused construction machinery, for example, as well as use less environmentally harmful solvents and paints.
Our US subsidiary Turner similarly adopted an efficient waste recycling program for all building projects in January 2005. Since 2008, waste management in Turner projects is geared to the company’s sustainability target, with at least 50 percent of waste on every project reused or recycled. Green building projects can achieve waste diversion rates of up to 95 percent.
All airports in the HOCHTIEF AirPort portfolio today have established standards for waste separation. Since 2008, a specially developed waste management strategy has made sure waste is recycled at Tirana Airport . The airport is a pioneer in Albania on this count. Disposal costs have been slashed as airport staff can now recycle 25 to 30 percent of material. The same goes for Budapest Airport , where a waste management strategy has been under implementation since January 2009. Management is targeting a 60 percent recycling rate in the next few years; the average for Hungary is five percent. For the airport serving the Hungarian capital, this reduces the burden on the environment by four metric tons of waste a day and helps save resources.
Resource-saving, efficient mining
HOCHTIEF is the world’s biggest contract miner: Working on contract to mine owners, the Group extracts resources across Australia and Asia in quantities exceeding 100 million metric tons a year. We place special importance in mining on efficiency, with satellite-controlled blasting, precise transport sequencing and modern extraction methods to secure maximum yield. Where clients require, mine sites are subsequently rehabilitated.