Eurobitume expert delivers Bitumen and Sustainability presentation at IBEF seminar

Europe |

Being the voice of the bitumen industry in Europe. Eurobitume was invited by the International Bitumen Emulsion Federation (IBEF) to participate in their recent Annual Meeting, which took place as a hybrid event - online and face-to-face – on 1 July 2022  in Paris.

Eurobitume Technical Lead Dr Ian Lancaster delivered a well-received presentation, ‘Bitumen and Sustainability’, which generated some interesting questions and discussion, and covered the following areas:

  • Drivers for environmental impact assessment
  • The regulatory framework in Europe
  • Overview of environmental impact assessment models
  • Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and the importance of impacts other than carbon
  • How EN 15804 +A2 defines the rules for lifecycle analysis.
  • The importance of “benefits beyond the system boundary”, such as re-use and recycling
    • Including an examination of why different Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) models give different results
  • Overview of the Eurobitume LCI and its various outputs, including the contribution of various lifecycle stages to different impacts (CO2, ozone depletion, acidification, etc)
  • Explanations of why emulsions are not (currently) covered in the Eurobitume LCI

In addition to Eurobitume’s input on bitumen and sustainability, the other presentation topics were:

  • Carbon calculations for different emulsion techniques (France & Spain)
  • The reduction in cutters in Australia
  • Chip seals in New Zealand
  • Emulsions for recycling in China

All presentations are available from the IBEF seminar website here.

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