§ Ms ShipleyTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will make a statement on the sustainable certification of the construction materials(a) stone, (b) steel and (c) timber. [74605]
§ Mr. WilsonThe sustainability of the built environment and the materials from which it is constructed is a key component of our Rethinking Construction strategy for the construction industry. The sustainable use of materials is dependent on a wide range of factors such as embodied energy, renewability, manufacturing process emissions, designed use, social costs, recycling, reuse and end of life disposal.
693WProduct sustainability certification is in its infancy, both within the UK and internationally. We are working closely with our European partners to produce sensible international standards on a whole-life costing basis.
Within the UK we have sponsored the Building Research Establishment to develop tools to quantify the environmental performance of products and processes. The result has been the introduction of the Ecopoint system that offers a basis for comparative assessment of building products and processes. This system is now being used to evaluate individual products to offer a clear, understandable indicator for product sustainability that can be applied to the fully breadth of products used in the construction industry.