Driven by its goal to renew its commitment to responsible growth and transparent information management, the Sorigué group has published its 2021 Sustainability Report: a single document bringing together its Statement of Non-Financial Information and Consolidated Report for the first time. 

 

These have been combined to make it easier to understand the size of the overall impact that the Group’s companies have in their operations as sustainable and innovative players. 

 

Backed by its sustainable focus and strategy, Sorigué has integrated environmental, social and governance standards across all its business divisions. This leads, for example, to a major drop in CO2 emissions in both Sorigué’s manufacturing processes and its city utilities, and opens the door for more efficient solutions to enhance the Group’s competitiveness. 

 

In this sense, some of its 2021 highlights covered by this document include creating its Energy division, launching a new waste recovery factory, introducing wood as a building material and specialising in green rooves. 

 

In terms of research and innovation, Sorigué has partnered with a variety of public and private organisations to find the most sustainable materials and methods. Some of its current projects include deodorising plastic bottles for reuse, recovering water purification plant waste, and using PV pavement to harness clean energy.

 

Sorigué has renewed its domestic and international certifications, an important milestone for meeting its Strategic Plan. Over 92% of its business is UNE-EN-ISO 14001-certified for environmental management, and in 2021 the group also renewed its UNE 19601 criminal compliance certification, confirming its commitment as Catalonia’s top construction company to stringently comply with the law. In addition, it renewed its IQNet SR10 certification for ensuring corporate social responsibility management systems.

 

Receiving the Government of Catalonia’s Seal of Guaranteed Environmental Quality for raw materials and recycled aggregates is another milestone, as it has extended to another five sustainably-made Sorigué bituminous mixes. Furthermore, the that policies that the Group has developed for integrating people with disabilities has earned it the Bequal seal, which honours companies going above and beyond legislation and that are actively and accountably committed.

Reducing the carbon footprint of its production cycles has been one of the company’s main goals in recent years. To do this, it has both increased the efficiency of its processes and begun to power them using its own on-site renewable energy.

 

In terms of energy efficiency, the Group has renewed its fleet with over 500 EVs and NGVs to phase out of fossil fuels, and has also installed solar panels on seven company buildings for self-generation. As part of its commitment to carbon sequestration, Sorigué has also planted over 30,000 trees at its facilities in Lleida. 

 

Moreover, the Sorigué Group has consolidated its focus on distributed generation and self-generation of renewable energy by acquiring the company Ecotelia Servicios Energéticos. This acquisition helped create a new Energy division to bring together various different services and implement energy efficiency projects. 

 

 

A new production and consumption model that optimises resources and maximising waste recovery will pave the way for a circular economy, and this concept cuts across all of Sorigué’s business divisions. In this sense, it is particularly notable that the Group creates biomass from ground garden trimmings and reuses 37% of materials excavated from building and civil engineering works to rehabilitate quarries and improve buildings. Furthermore, through in-situ cold recycling, it is able to use 100% of milled material to produce new bituminous mixtures, in a process that fully reuses this resource. 

 

At the same time, Sorigué has boosted its waste cycle operations after purchasing and retrofitting a recovery factory located in Barberà del Vallès, Barcelona. Its newly-implemented automated sorting systems not only improve waste sorting, but also increase waste recovery rates. This will reduce the amount of rejected materials going to landfill or incineration and, in turn, lower the factory’s carbon footprint.