Lower Carbon Concrete

Boral’s range of lower carbon concrete products will help you achieve your sustainability, engineering and architectural goals. Our multi-application, high performing, lower carbon concrete products reduce embodied carbon by up to 50%.

Boral Concrete’s Lower Carbon Concrete (LCC) products can be used for all types of structures including: 

• houses
• commercial buildings
• multi-residential buildings
• high-rise buildings
• civil projects
• infrastructure projects

By matching the engineering properties of each product with the structural requirements, the carbon footprint of the project can be reduced for the optimal cost. 

Traditional lower carbon concrete products have low early age strength and may have higher drying shrinkage which makes them less desirable for many applications. In particular they are unsuitable for precast elements and post tensioned slabs. 

Boral’s Lower Carbon Concrete (LCC) products include products with good early age strength and superior engineering properties. They can be used for precast and post tensioned slabs so there is no compromise to the construction schedule and engineers can take advantage of the superior drying shrinkage properties. 

Boral has three product ranges ENVIROCRETE®, ENVIROCRETE® PLUS and ENVISIA®. ENVIROCRETE® is a traditional lower carbon concrete product, ENVIROCRETE® PLUS has better early age strength and drying shrinkage properties and ENVISIA® concrete has the best early age strength and drying shrinkage properties. ENVISIA® also has a light colour and exhibits a very good appearance in an off–formwork finish.

“There are a few low carbon concrete products on the market, but Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) are few and far between. At the time of preparing our Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA), Boral had the only comprehensive EPDs. This gave the project team confidence in the carbon reduction potential of the product and allowed us to recommend ENVISIA® to our client.” 

– Sam Clegg, Associate Principle at Wardle Studio

To reduce the embodied carbon of our concrete, the Portland cement component is replaced with lower carbon cementitious alternatives such as fly ash and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS). Previously, simply substituting a significant amount of cement in a concrete mix would negatively impact the feasibility of its use. However, with Boral's proprietary ZEP ® technology, we can offer lower carbon concrete with good-early age strength, excellent drying/shrinkage properties, less prone to cracking and superior durability. 

These enhanced and proprietary improvements provide engineers, builders, and architects with a cost-effective lower carbon concrete alternative that can be used across multiple applications from the architecturally distinct to the most complex engineering challenges.

A key lever of our decarbonisation pathway is reducing cementitious intensity through our lower carbon concrete strategy. Shifting our conventional concrete mixes to our ENVISIA®, Envirocrete® Plus, and Envirocrete® range of products will reduce our use of cement in the production of concrete.