The U.S. cement industry as a whole would have to qualify as a relatively environmentally aware sector. It is a large consumer of energy, and a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (both indirectly from combustion processes and directly as the result of the release of carbon dioxide from the calcining of lime). It is a consumer of hazardous wastes as well as a producer. (See the "Impacts, Risks, and Regulations" (IRR) document for the cement sector for a more detailed picture.) Browsing through the activities of its leading trade organization, the Portland Cement Association (PCA), the observer can see clearly that the industry has taken a number of positive steps to deal with its high environmental profile.
Under these circumstances, the relatively low emphasis accorded by the sector to the EMS approach seems anomalous. Only one somewhat indirect allusion to EMS was in evidence on the PCA site (in the context of an awards ceremony in 2001, where a facility got a "runner up" designation for having a "state-of-the-art environmental management system"), despite numerous other awards covering a wide variety of environmental issues.
Is the EMS approach somehow less appropriate for this sector? More likely, it is the absence of the market factors that drive EMS in other sectors. Demands for ISO 14001 certification, starting with OEMs and passing on up the supply chain, is one prime motivator for EMS. Participation in global commerce is another. One might speculate that the cement industry, whose chief product is too heavy and has too low value-added content to support long-distance transportation, is shielded somewhat from global competition. Furthermore, the industry's immediate customers (often contractors not directly associated with the ultimate users of the structures for which the cement is destined) do not typically have the market exposure to the court of public opinion that would tend to drive a proactive environmental stance.
In any event, it appears that the case for the EMS approach has yet to be made in this sector, and that it is probably going to have to be based on considerations of cost savings and liability avoidance rather than on public opinion if it is to make significant headway.
Almost all of the available resources pertaining to the cement industry that have been identified for this study (and there are very few of them) are of foreign origin. There do not seem to be any usable templates with an explicitly EMS format. A few case studies and other citations have been listed to give something of the flavor of what little is out there. The EMS resources for this industry have yet to be created.