Advancing environmental evaluation in cement industry in Iran

Many developing countries strive to cover their need for cement by domestic productions. The rising number of cement factories in these countries gives evidence to this. However, the ambition comes along with considerable environmental impacts that can be attributed to this industry. Policy makers, manufacturers and the public are becoming more and more aware about the environmental issues attributed to cement production. Striving for an environmental friendly production of this good is an urgent need. This paper discusses how environmental evaluation of the cement industry in Iran can be facilitated. Up to now, there is no standard or coherent method available to proceed with the evaluation. To advance environmental evaluation, a set of appropriate indicators have been developed by cooperating with experts from university, industry and policy makers. Five representative cement factories in Iran were then surveyed to derive quantitative data for the indicators. This helped to picture the current performance of this industry sector. The importance of the indicators was determined with the help of the cooperating industrial partners. By using the TOPSIS method, indicators were prioritized and improvement strategies for this industrial sector were derived. 15 indicators are introduced; among them seven are for the intensity of consumptions during production of cement and emissions production, three for control of emissions to air, four for capacities of control of water pollution and one for the inefficiency level in the execution of ISO 14000. It shows that the last indicator has the highest priority followed by the intensity of CO2 emission.