Page 66 - 2023 Sustainability Report

ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP

Our Magnesia Specialties Business

After our cement business, our Magnesia Specialties products manufactured at this plant help control emissions
business, which has two plants — one in Ohio and one and result in other environmental benefits.
in Michigan — is the second largest contributor to our
Scope 1 GHG footprint. This is due almost entirely to Some of those applications for our products include:
the operation of our Woodville, Ohio, plant where we
operate six lime kilns. The calcination process at Woodville
is very similar to our cement business, except that
Purification of drinking water as well as
Woodville processes dolomitic limestone, which contains a
higher CO component than the high calcium limestone industrial and municipal wastewater
2
used in our cement plants. In contrast to cement, our
Magnesia Specialties business cannot achieve GHG
reductions through substitution for our calcined lime Optimization of transformer electricity
product since both internal and external customers require transmission
that we maintain extremely high purity to allow further
processing.

Replacement of hazardous chemicals with
“Notably, our products our non-hazardous magnesium oxide and
hydroxide products
manufactured at this plant help
control emissions and result in

other environmental benefits.” Sulfur oxide pollution reduction

Nevertheless, we have seen a considerable reduction
in GHG emissions intensity in our Magnesia Specialties Nuclear waste neutralization
business in recent years. This is primarily driven through
our investments in modernizing the Woodville plant,
most notably construction of a new, more efficient kiln
Improvements in gas turbine electric
that was completed in 2012. In 2018, under a consent
generation efficiency
decree negotiated with USEPA, the Company committed
to spend an additional +/- $30 million at this site to add
preheaters and other state-of-the-art control technology
to two other large kilns. While primarily designed to Reduction of chemical usage in pulp
control SO emissions, we saw a 6% reduction in GHG bleaching and improvements in paper
2
intensity in 2023 versus 2022, which we attribute at least grade pulp yield, reducing wood demand,
in part to this installation. and fertilizers to maximize crop yield and
to replenish soil nutrients
We are currently evaluating methods to achieve additional
reductions through implementation of heat recovery
systems, improvements in combustion efficiency through
Reduction of sewer system pollution,
new product mixes, process changes and upgraded
such as hydrogen sulfide gas
equipment, fuel switching, and minimizing the generation
of fines and other byproducts.

We also manufacture magnesia-based products at our
Manistee, Michigan, facility, which are a relatively
insignificant source of direct GHG emissions. Notably, our

64 2023 SUSTAINABILITY REPORT