The Belgian Federation of Producers of Construction Materials (PMC) is an umbrella organisation that brings together nearly all of the construction materials industry. The PMC represents over 600 firms – two thirds of which are small and medium-sized businesses – from Belgium’s 3 regions, showing that local manufacturing is not an empty notion for the construction materials industry.
Sustainability and the circular economy are at the heart of the concerns of the PMC, who adhere to the EU’s approach in this area – an approach that recommends evaluating and minimising environmental impact at the scale of individual buildings for their entire life cycle, while also accounting for the interactions between the materials used in a building, their maintenance, and their lifespan. The regions have implemented this approach through the TOTEM interface. This approach places less emphasis on the performance of individual materials, and can even show this aspect to be a source of hasty conclusions. It is with this in mind that the PMC’s members develop high-calibre materials that work together to minimise the ecological footprint of buildings all while ensuring excellent energy efficiency, sound insulation, fire safety, etc.
