Natural Capital

Although not all environmental impacts are material to our organization, we are committed to using resources efficiently and reducing our environmental footprint.

By implementing our corporate environmental management system (“EMS”), we aim to ensure consistent execution of our EHS standards and strategies. Our EMS requires each location to conform not only to environmental regulatory requirements, but also to improve on our methods to minimize air emissions, water discharge, waste, and chemical hazards. Additionally, where applicable, we pursue ISO 14001 accreditation.

In 2021, we have 11 locations (~33%) certified to the ISO 14001:2015 standard for environmental management systems.  These include:

Note: we currently do not have a schedule to pursue additional EMS accreditations; however, our internal EMS always applies.

We record our environmental footprint to influence reduction strategies and for future reporting. We plan to evolve our collection methods, which will influence our baseline and future targets. For the interim, the environmental footprint metrics we track include energy consumption and accompanying greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, and waste generation.

* As we develop our sustainability strategy, there is a likelihood that our baselines, goals, and intensity-based metrics will be revised in future reporting due to improved data collection, market influence and acquisitions & divestitures. 

For 2021, LB Foster consumed 210,933 gigajoules (GJ) of energy across electricity, natural gas, diesel fuel and propane to operate manufacturing facilities, warehouses, R&D centers, office environments, and mobilize vehicles.

Our energy consumption slightly increased 1.3% over the previous year, exclusively due to natural gas and diesel use but was also influenced by increases in revenue and production.

2021 Performance Notes: Fuel is a combination of on-site and mobile (vehicles). The trend of energy reduction was influenced by production levels due to the COVID-19 pandemic, divesting the IOS Testing & Inspection business in 2020 and divesting the Piling business in Q3 of 2021.

Intensity-based energy consumption (GJ) per Million $USD

For energy, we currently measure our performance against one goal:

• Reduce electricity consumption intensity by 3.0% by 2030

2021 Performance Notes: Although fuel use increased, there was a decrease of intensity-based energy consumption from the previous year. Since 2018, the trend of energy-intensity reduction can be attributed to COVID19 pandemic-related production declines, divesting businesses, but also includes energy reduction projects. Electricity consumption continues to decline.

Our carbon emissions are a function of our energy consumption as well as the renewable energy on the various grids. As we plan for energy efficiency at our plants and with our vehicles, including increases of renewable energy on the grid, we are confident to meet our current goals. Our data collection methods are improving each year, but still need improvements to realize comprehensive accounting. We will be developing our carbon strategy for future reporting, but inevitably will meet stakeholder drivers on carbon emissions, risks, and opportunities.

2021 Performance Notes: Since 2018, the trend of absolute GHG reduction can be attributed to COVID-19 pandemic-related production declines, divesting businesses, but also includes energy reduction projects.

Intensity-based GHG Emissions (Mt) per Million $USD.

For GHG emissions, we currently measure our performance against one goal:

• Reduce GHG (CO2e) intensity by 2.0% by 2030

Few manufacturing facilities require process water. We are improving our collection methods for more accurate reporting of our water profile, i.e., consumption, source, and geography to better manage our usage to meet our goals and potential areas of water stress which could impact our operations.

Most of our operations have low water-use demands but could be subject to availability restrictions in the future. However, water use improvement projects, i.e., conservation and efficiency, are considered at all facilities.

We currently measure our performance against two goals:

• Increase water reuse/onsite within our manufacturing facilities by 5% by 2030
• Reduce water consumption within our manufacturing facilities by 5% by 2030

Note: Water use is dominated by the St. Jean-Sur-Richelieu facility (divested 2022). This location consumes over 70% of total water and is also responsible for over 98% of total water reuse/recycling efforts. A more granular water profile will be considered in future reporting.

We acquire raw materials for either distribution or we convert them into finished products in our manufacturing processes. The more efficient we are in optimizing materials to make our products, the fewer resources we consume, the more money we save and the less waste we generate. That is why we first work towards absolute material utilization throughout our manufacturing processes followed by minimizing, reusing, or recycling wastes we generate.

Typical waste streams resulting from activities include excess raw material consumption, process by-products, equipment maintenance and cleaning, substandard product or defects, and packaging. We evaluate each waste stream for proper management requirements according to our EMS and local regulations.

We currently measure our performance against four goals:

• Reduce waste disposal to landfill or incineration by 1.5% per year (environmental impact per net sales) by 2023
• Reduce hazardous waste disposal by 2% per year (environmental impact per net sales) by 2023
• Increase waste reuse and recycling by 1.5% per year (combined; environmental impact per net sales) by 2023
• Identification of ways in which to make production waste useful for others as secondary materials and to use diverted waste within our production by 2023

Note: Waste reused either went back into production or benefited the plant's phyical site. Waste recycled was mostly scrap steel. Reclaimed waste materials was sourced from other industrial production waste (e.g., fly ash)