Hilti's tools have nearly three times more recycled components than average
In the latest of our features in association with Hilti, Andrew Gaved hears the strides the company is making to reduce its environmental impact – and those of its customers too.
The construction industry and those companies that work with it have become increasingly concerned with carbon reduction in recent years – with good reason, given it is estimated to be responsible for over a third of global carbon emissions.
As a major supplier to the industry, Hilti believes it has a two-fold decarbonising mission: firstly, it wants to do everything it can to reduce carbon emissions for the production and distribution of its equipment; but then secondly it believes it should help its customers to find ways to reduce their emissions too. The extent to which it is prepared to do this second mission, from technology to reduce material use to software which cuts installation emissions, is surprising and, arguably, unparalleled, for a company whose core business is manufacturing.
Hilti already has sustainability as one of its three customer promises, alongside productivity and safety, and it has appointed Margaux Wibin as its dedicated Northern Europe sustainability manager. She believes the fundamental task is to improve understanding of the challenge:
“In the construction industry, sustainability has really started to be something that a lot of people are talking about,” she says, “But it’s still hard for people sometimes to grasp really what it means.”But the starting point should be consideration of some stark statistics, she notes: Some 37% of global CO2 emissions are linked to construction; the industry consumes 50% of global raw materials and it is responsible for 30% of the waste – with 13% of that waste being actually materials that are never used. “So there are a number of challenges ahead of us.”
Hilti has focused its approach on the concept of ‘circular construction’ and it has a bold ambition, Margaux says: “Circularity is something that we want to lead on in our industry.”
This has seen the company aim to incorporate circularity in all its activity – from designing and selecting the right product and material, through design optimisation; to engineering the solution; right through to the end of the tool’s life:
“We know that how we design the building has a huge impact on the carbon footprint,” she adds, “So this is very much where Hilti also as an engineering company, can then support and have an impact.”
This emphasis on reducing installation carbon is a key focus for the company, moving it well beyond what many will expect of the ‘traditional’ supplier relationship: “We believe that we can support our customers by optimising building design – to have the right materials in the right volume, but also the right supports with the right technology, looking at areas such as modular systems and rethinking conventional ways of building, keeping in mind the entire life of the building.”
Rather than relying on general claims, Hilti has subjected itself to independent scrutiny, via the EcoVadis benchmarking scheme, and the company is proud to have scored a gold rating for the third year in a row. “EcoVadis has acknowledged Hilti as a “Leader in Carbon Management” and as a “company with a best-in-class greenhouse gas management system and strong ambitions for decarbonisation.”
As a company, Hilti is now carbon neutral in its own operations, which it has achieved with a 60% carbon reduction compared to a 2019 baseline. The rest has been offset with an external partner so that it is applied against projects that are designed specifically for the Hilti group, rather than credits simply bought online, she adds.
However, the important next step is ultimately to get to net zero and that means tackling the supply chain – the company’s Scope Three emissions are currently some 95% of its total carbon emissions. Hilti has set an near-term target of a 30% CO2 reduction decoupled from economic growth by 2032 and a long-term target of net zero by 2050.
“To reach net zero we’ll need to have a lot of innovation and we know that this is going to be a very hard journey on which every single person needs to be involved,” Margaux adds.
Greener tools
The focus on carbon reduction for Hilti naturally begins with the tools themselves: “Where we can have a big impact is by looking at the performance-to-weight ratio of the tool,” she says, “So basically that means having a less heavy tool, which contains less material, and thus less carbon emissions linked to it. The Nuron cordless platform is a great example – we now have a better performing tool than before, which on average has lower carbon emissions linked to it – and we have proved this through the lifecycle assessment we do, where we are able to compare data.”
The manufacturer has also increased the recycled contents of its products, to the point where it currently claims a proportion of 24% recycled content on average in the tools range. To those unfamiliar with the tools sector, this number might at first glance seem pretty routine, but given the extensive use of plastics and composites, it is actually quite remarkable, as it is nearly three times the industry average of around 9%.
Margaux adds that it is important that the customers which have the Fleet Management programme know that at the end of the life of their tools, they don’t go to landfill – but are first assessed for reuse then as a last resort, recycled: “And if the tool is sent to recycling, then we tell them the volume of different materials like copper and steel we have extracted out of it,” she stresses.
Other strategies include the use of low carbon footprint materials and finding ways to extend the working life of the tool. With this in mind, Hilti has developed runtime tags, which can be attached to any powered product – not just those from the manufacturer – which will track real time tool use down to the minute. Armed with this ‘real runtime’ data, a tool owner (or Hilti itself if the owner is on its Fleet Management programme) can ensure that a tool isn’t discarded sooner than it needs to be – the company has found promising increases on estimated tool lifetimes in its initial trials.
Hilti has a stretch target for reducing its carbon emissions linked to tools by 40% by 2032 – a goal which will cost the company millions in investment, Margaux adds.
Buildings emissions
But an even more impactful way to help reduce carbon can be found in the way its customers design and build their buildings. Here Hilti offers a two-pronged attack: firstly, it offers data transparency on the embodied carbon of its products via routes like Life Cycle Assessments or increasingly Environmental Product Declarations.
Secondly, it assists with green building certification applications, whether by supplying data and documentation or via its integrated design services, where Hilti helps design the building in such a way that it is not over-engineered and that reduces the material required. It has developed a carbon calculation tool in-house which can provide customers with carbon optimised design.
These design services also help with reducing operational carbon in the construction process, via pre-fabrication – and there are other innovations on hand too.
One of these is a neat bit of technology to reduce construction carbon -it offers concrete sensors, which indicate the optimum cement proportion to ensure that the concrete is not unnecessarily over-engineered: “Through concrete sensors cement can be reduce up to 24% with a consequent reduction in carbon emissions of the whole building up to 20%” says Margaux, “Given that around 88% of the emissions of a project are linked to concrete, it’s clear we can have a real impact there.”
The company is also in the midst of developing a new range of connectors for timber frame construction, which has not historically been its core business, but which can be up to 60% less carbon emitting than reinforced concrete.
A further innovation can be seen in the company’s modular support systems, which replace the conventional mix of pipe racks and cable trays with a single multi-trade support system that carries all the services. With the combination of a designed solution and prefabrication, Hilti claims a whopping potential saving of up to 50% of carbon emissions in this area.
And, Margaux adds, the use of prefabricated systems brings a whole series of other benefits too: “You improve the health and safety environment, you reduce the waste and you will also have transportation CO2 emissions that are lower than bringing in individual materials. So it all adds up.”
Margaux concludes with some no-nonsense advice for those for whom the sustainability and carbon reduction journey might seem daunting: “The one thing we shouldn’t do is simply to wait for the next big ‘net zero innovation’, because until we get to the perfect product with zero carbon emissions, there will always be things that we can do. So we should all get on the train and start doing them!”
Read the first in our series of articles here
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