The Sustainable Building Material
In terms of sustainability, aluminium is one of the best materials available. Aside from its practical and energy-saving advantages in construction, it can be recycled repeatedly without loss of properties using just 5% of the energy originally used to mine, smelt and produce it. Aluminium’s natural strength, lightness and durability makes it the ideal material for meeting architects’ glazing requirements.
At Kawneer, sustainability is defined as using our values to build financial success, environmental excellence, and social responsibility through partnerships in order to deliver net long-term benefits to our shareowners, employees, customers, suppliers, and the communities in which we operate. We are dedicated to developing high performance, sustainable buildings.
Aluminium is attained from the natural resource bauxite through an electrolytic process. The bauxite is mined, only 5km2 at a time and all the flora and fauna indigenous to the area are replaced through a rehabilitation process.
Kawneer is committed to using recycled billets where possible. Because aluminium does not rust, decay, or lose its quality, it can be recycled repeatedly without loss of properties.
Kawneer UK
At Kawneer UK we take all our responsibilities very seriously. We’re dedicated to creating products and systems that promote integrated, whole-building design practices.
We continuously review the impact of both our products and our working practices to set new industry standards and we also recognise the responsibility we have to our people and to the communities in which we work.
We have developed leading-edge production techniques to ensure that manufacturing efficiency is optimised, and environmental impact is minimised. Our right-first-time quality management systems have been devised to minimise waste and exceed the requirements of current ISO 9001 standards.
There are a number of ways in which we continue to reduce our impact on the environment. Here are just a few:
- For our own production, we use recycled aluminium billets 100% of the time and all of our production waste is recycled back to a smelter to be re-used.
- By having extrusion, paint and thermal break rolling all under one roof, the number of miles our products travel in the supply chain is at a minimum.
- Our high quality polyester powder paint finishes are produced on our behalf by AkzoNobel, a global company with an equally impressive commitment to sustainability.
- At Kawneer UK, a focused site-wide team has reduced average power consumption by 11.5%, gas consumption by 34% since 2015 and water intensity usage by 81% since 2010.
- Kawneer is accredited to Environmental Standard – ISO 14001 (2015 Version). The sales, design, manufacture and supply of aluminium architectural products.
- Kawneer UK becomes the world’s first aluminium company to achieve the BES 6001 framework standard for responsible sourcing of construction products. Click to find out more.
