Enhancing biodiversity

Within a relatively small operational area that is disrupted continuously, like the quarry or gravel pit, the natural environments are often more varied than in the pristine neighboring area. This makes our sites unique and creates opportunities to benefit biodiversity and species both during operation and when rehabilitating. 

Aiming to contribute to increase biodiversity

Our ambition is to ensure biodiversity at the areas where we are active - during application, operation, and part of the rehabilitation. It is a part of our license to operate!

Our goal is to contribute to increase biodiversity in gravel pits and quarries where we operate in by 2030. To reach the goal we will take actions to increase our knowledge and further incorporate the biodiversity work into our business processes and our way of working.

We are reviewing our operations with help of the mitigation hierarchy, which is a widely used tool to limit negative impacts on biodiversity. It includes preventive actions to avoid and minimize effects, and remediating actions to rehabilitate biodiversity and lastly to compensate impact by creating biodiversity values. 

Our way of working

We operate in many quarries and gravel pits throughout the Nordics. All our operations are based on permits, which covers an extensive review of the intended operation and includes among others an Environment Impact Assessment (EIA). Some activities that we are doing at our sites to enhance biodiversity are directly connected to and regulated in our permits and in other legal demands. Other activities have been identified in the planning, during operations or at the time for rehabilitation. 

We have developed a method, NCC Kielo, to implement and follow-up solutions to maintain and promote biodiversity in quarries and gravel pits. It is an action plan with several measures that we follow over time. You can read more about NCC Kielo and our selected sites here.

At many of our sites or in relation to our operations there are individual cases that aim to improve biodiversity. These examples create good environments for birds, insects or flowers and working among others. Below you can read about some biodiversity case related to our sites throughout the Nordics.