SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION
OUR APPROACH TO SOLUTIONS
To help customers create a more sustainable built environment, we focus our approach across four areas:
In built
We are continuously improving the sustainable performance of both our business and our products. This includes ensuring our raw materials are responsibly sourced; protecting the environment and enhancing biodiversity through excellent site stewardship; reducing carbon, water and waste; increasing recycled contents; and improving transport efficiency.
In construction
Our solutions can make a significant contribution to improving the sustainability of the construction process, including making it safer, faster, generating less waste, or requiring less material and/or equipment.
In use
This vitally important area centres on how our products can improve sustainability during the in-use phase of a building or asset. Solutions include enhancing durability, reducing maintenance, using the thermal mass benefits of concrete to deliver substantial energy and carbon saving over its lifetime, or developing permeable paving solutions for use in Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems.
We also develop solutions for the end-of-life phase and use the concept of a circular economy to move away from the traditional ’take-make-dispose’ model to one where building components are kept in valuable use.
In support
Tarmac is committed to offering our customers support at every step of the construction process, ensuring sustainability features at both the design and build stages of works. By engaging with clients as early as possible, prior to project commencement, we can ensure that our expertise and services add genuine value where it matters, and that sustainability goes hand in hand with all other project priorities.
FROM PILOT TO PRODUCTION
In 2025, Tarmac successfully transitioned biobinders from trial to on demand availability at our Birmingham asphalt plant, where dedicated storage and blending capability now ensures a consistent, reliable supply. Our biobinder is compatible with a wide range of asphalt mix designs, and, importantly, is compatible with other lower carbon solutions including RAP utilisation, warm mix, and cold lay technologies. This availability marks a major milestone in scaling lower carbon materials for everyday use.
Biobinders themselves are renewable, plant‑based alternatives to fossil‑derived bitumen. They are produced from biogenic byproducts such as tall oil, lignin and other natural residues from the pulp and paper industry. Because the carbon absorbed during plant growth is retained within the material, these binders are, significantly, carbon negative. They reduce reliance on petroleum-based sources while acting as carbon sinks within the asphalt matrix. Importantly, biobinders deliver these carbon benefits with no impact on performance, enabling high‑quality, durable asphalt that cuts embodied carbon without changing how roads are specified or delivered.
LEADING THE SHIFT TO LOWER CARBON ROADS
CEVO Asphalts were launched in 2025, building directly on the success of the pioneering A64 lower carbon resurfacing trial delivered in 2024, where early combinations of biogenic binders, warm mix technology and circular materials demonstrated the scale of achievable carbon reductions. CEVO brings these innovations together as a practical, scalable system for lower carbon road delivery, reducing emissions by up to 45%.
These savings are achieved using biobinders, warm mix production, and high RAP content, while locking biogenic carbon into the pavement structure. When combined with wider decarbonisation measures such as electric plant and equipment, CEVO has already enabled savings of up to 80% on major schemes.
Supported by our PAVE Technology Solutions, CEVO enhances whole‑life performance with optimised pavement design, improved durability and reduced maintenance interventions. CEVO incorporates advanced polymers, recycled materials, and carbon‑neutral aggregates. By doing so, CEVO provides a robust, future‑ready solution that helps clients lower lifecycle emissions, extend pavement life, and collaborate across the value chain to accelerate the transition to net zero.
LOWER CARBON ASPHALT COLLABORATION
A 4,500m² carriageway reconstruction for Blackpool Council showcased how close collaboration across the value chain can deliver more sustainable, high performing road solutions. Working alongside Multipave, the project combined 735 tonnes of cold recycled bound material (CRBM), produced from planings taken directly from the existing carriageway, with Tarmac’s Bio ULTIFLEX, a lower carbon, long-life surface course engineered for whole life durability.
By reusing site won materials, incorporating a biogenic additive that locks carbon into the CRBM structure, and mixing at ambient temperatures, the scheme delivered substantial carbon reductions. Optimised logistics, including backhauling waste planings on delivery vehicles, cut transport emissions by 62.4%, while the combined CRBM and Bio ULTIFLEX solution reduced raw material extraction, transport and manufacturing (A1–A3) emissions by 40%, delivering an overall 34.9% reduction in total carbon with a 35% lower carbon intensity per m².
For Blackpool Council, this approach provided a cost effective and future ready alternative to traditional highways reconstruction, reducing the need for primary materials, improving durability, and supporting whole life value. This project demonstrated how innovative materials and shared technical expertise can overcome challenging site conditions, extend asset life, and significantly reduce environmental impact to set a benchmark for lower carbon, circular road maintenance aligned to Tarmac’s focus on collaboration, whole life performance and sustainable innovation.
TRANSFORMING POTHOLE REPAIR
Launched in 2025, ULTIPATCH Zero is Tarmac’s first net‑zero pothole repair material, achieving a 100% carbon footprint reduction at gate compared to our original ULTIPATCH Pothole mix. This is made possible through a redesigned binder system that replaces petroleum‑based components with Tarmac’s biobinder, blending plant‑based bio‑bitumen and a bio‑based fluxing agent that carries a carbon‑negative footprint due to sequestered carbon during plant growth. The resulting mix maintains the same installation process and performance characteristics as the existing ULTIPATCH product, allowing contractors and local authorities to adopt a net zero alternative without any additional training or changes to working methods.
ULTIPATCH Zero is an example of how Tarmac is working with our supply chain to provide industry leading, lower carbon solutions that are practical, proven and ready for real world use. As further bio based developments progress, ULTIPATCH Zero represents a meaningful step in expanding sustainable product choices available to customers and accelerating low carbon innovation across UK highways maintenance.
COLLABORATING ON LOWER CARBON HIGHWAY INFRASTRUCTURE
Through close collaboration with Extrudakerb, Tarmac developed and delivered a lower carbon concrete solution for extruded concrete barrier systems on the M1 motorway network. Working in partnership over several years, the teams refined the mix design through laboratory testing, paving trials and live project delivery to ensure it met Extrudakerb’s precise performance requirements.
The collaboration extended beyond material development to the construction process itself. By combining Tarmac’s lower carbon concrete expertise with Extrudakerb’s controlled delivery fleet and live monitoring technology, the solution ensured consistent performance from plant to paver, supporting efficient installation, high-quality outcomes, and lower carbon delivery on busy motorway schemes. This partnership demonstrated how early engagement and shared technical expertise helped deliver safer, more efficient and lower carbon infrastructure solutions for the highways sector.
ADVANCING NEXT GENERATION CEMENT
Tarmac is supporting the trial of Material Evolution’s MevoCem, a next generation ultra-low carbon cement produced at the company’s Mevo A1 facility in Wrexham. The facility has the capacity to manufacture 120,000 tonnes annually, making it the UK’s largest producer of this type of cement. MevoCem is created through a patented alkalifusion process which activates industrial byproducts without the need for heat, enabling a substantial reduction in embodied emissions. The technology delivers a 77% carbon saving compared with CEM I cement, while also maintaining strength and durability. Through this pilot, we are helping to demonstrate how innovative manufacturing methods and advanced materials science can bring high performance, lower carbon cement solutions to market at scale, supporting the transition to more sustainable construction.
STRENGTHING CARBON INSIGHT FOR CUSTOMERS
Ensuring our customers can make informed decisions on the products and solutions that they use on their projects by accurately calculating their environmental impact is a key element of the ‘In support’ aspect of our approach to sustainable construction. Understanding the impact of products is the first step in the journey towards understanding the whole life emissions of a project.
Expanding our Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) cover across mortar, concrete, cement and aggregates enables customers, specifiers and design teams to consider whole-life environmental impacts, across extraction and processing of raw materials, transport of raw materials to production site, manufacturing, transport to customer site, installation, and then end-of-life and recycling stages. Providing comprehensive data helps to eliminate environmental assumptions when calculating and measuring the impact of their projects. Providing this level of transparency not only supports our customers in meeting their own sustainability commitments but also helps them gain a competitive advantage.
We are committed to managing and reducing the carbon footprint of our operations and products, and to supporting our customers in selecting the lowest carbon option on their decarbonisation journeys. We are increasingly delivering lower carbon materials, responding to carbon-related enquiries, and enabling customers to achieve their carbon targets.
Since the launch of our Sustainability Strategy, Act, we have seen an exponential increase in demand for carbon footprints, rising from 1,131 in 2021 to 36,640 in 2025. This demonstrates the changing approach of the industry, and Tarmac is proud to have been able to support our customers in making informed decisions.
DELIVERING WHOLE LIFE CARBON LEADERSHIP
Our commitment to embedding PAS 2080 into everyday practice continued throughout 2025, with Tarmac maintaining certification as both a Supplier and Constructor. This year, our focus moved beyond demonstrating compliance to actively putting PAS 2080 into action across the value chain, from collaborating with suppliers and customers on carbon‑efficient project delivery to supporting teams with clearer guidance and enhanced carbon‑data tools that improve whole life decision‑making.
The latest surveillance audit highlighted several strengths, including the maturity of our net zero roadmap, our internal engagement on sustainability performance, and the application of PAS 2080 principles on the A64 project, where whole life carbon thinking shaped material choices and construction approaches. The auditor also recognised our continued effort to widen internal understanding of PAS 2080, supported by new online presentations and accessible guidance that help teams integrate carbon management into everyday work.
Maintaining this certification reflects our commitment to collaborating across the value chain to reduce emissions, providing industry leading carbon management practices, and driving innovation through lower carbon products, processes and solutions. PAS 2080 remains a key enabler of our approach, helping the business, and the wider construction sector, make meaningful progress toward truly sustainable, whole life optimised infrastructure.
LOOKING FORWARD
Collaboration with our customers and the wider value chain will remain central to advancing sustainable construction. In 2026, we will expand our CEVO product range, introduce our next zero carbon product, Ultipatch Footway Zero, and continue to develop and implement innovative lower carbon solutions, supporting customers to make more sustainable, whole life decisions.
