“If you want to achieve sustainability, you must really want it, really aim for it.” – why Christoph Moellers prefers the cement industry to the internet start-up world.

Christoph Moellers, Chief Representative, Holcim Beijing Representative Office, Beijing, P. R. China

The message of Holcim’s CEO Markus Akermann in their Sustainability Report 2003 reads like this: “It is important for Holcim to pursue the goal of sustainable development. We want to grow our business while encouraging econo-mic growth for growing populations… How does our Group decrease CO2 and other emissions, decrease impacts on biodiversity, and generally shrink our ecological footprint while at the same time meeting the increasing demand for cement and our other products by a rapidly growing po-pulation?”
We were curious to see what sustainability means to Hol-cim representatives in the field – especially in the world’s largest cement market, China, that pro-duces and consumes 50% of world's cement. Talking to Chris-toph Moellers, the Chief Repre-sentative of Holcim’s Beijing Office, we were astonished to see how seriously Holcim takes sustainability. For years they have been doing their best to optimize their impact on the environment throughout the whole supply chain, using the same measures for Switzer-land, Indonesia or China, where competitors may not even have heard the word “environment”. With cement – due to its weight and bulkiness – always being an especially local product, Holcim is also committed to the communities they work in and especially to their employees more seriously than many companies we have seen. An important part is the social and environmental management of the quarries to make sure they are well integrated after the exploitation.
Despite all the efforts, there are certainly areas where Holcim could extend its responsibilities further up and down the supply chain, and where the company might want to look into solutions beyond cement.

Enjoy reading some of Christoph Moellers’ thoughts in the selected quotations below and you may be able to read more about the sustainability initiatives of Holcim in our book “MyImpact”.

Christoph Moellers’s selected quotations:
“At some point in my life I wrote down a list of 50 things that I could imagine doing in my life. One of them was to learn Chinese which I still do. Others were visiting friends all over the world or becoming a teacher – all very diffe-rent things serving as a range of fallback-options that I could do without selling my soul.”

“The cement industry thinks in very long terms; you ex-pect a quarry to last at least 50 years. It may not auto-matically be viewed as the sexiest industry by outsiders, but I believe that I can have a better impact if I work at a place that fits my nature and way of thinking.”

“If you want to achieve sustainability, you must really want it, really aim for it. There may be some companies that accept a certain number of employee deaths per construction or production site. I am proud to work for a company that does not compromise on these things.”

“China produces and consumes around 50% of the world’s cement. Although we are still small in this market, it is a huge challenge but also an opportunity to help getting things right in such an important field.”

“As a small office, we are immensely proud to be hosting the first Asia-Pacific Awards Ceremony for the Holcim Foundation’s Sustainable Construction Awards. We expect some quite innovative price winners from the region.”

“If you work against your beliefs, you are going to be nei-ther happy nor successful. And if you do not care about what you do, you really have a problem.”

“I think one of my contributions here will be to show peo-ple different ways of thinking. My vision is that people say, when I leave someday, that I have made a diffe-rence in the way they think and work. I would like to help open people’s minds as much as they open mine.”

“When it comes to employee satisfaction, pure money does not cut it. They also care about education, per-spectives and the social environment in terms of trust, honesty and good communication. That’s what I am trying to provide.”

Some background on Christoph Moellers:
Born to a German father and a Dutch mother, Christoph grew up in Switzerland, South Africa and Germany, with the family moving frequently. He graduated in Business Admi-nistration from the St. Gallen Business School in Switzerland.
After working for an internet start-up company for several years, he decided to work for Holcim because of the feeling that the unique Holcim cul-ture and people are a very good fit for him.
In his career, Christoph held various international assign-ments. Based out of Singapore, he has worked for most of Holcim's Group Companies in Asia Pacific on the implemen-tation of Holcim's Global Procurement Initiative, soon get-ting in touch with the company’s high environmental and social standards. He joined Holcim’s office in Beijing as a Business Planner in January 2005 and was promoted to the position of Chief Representative as of 01 August 2005

Some background on Holcim:
Holcim was founded in 1912 as Holderbank and grew to one of the world’s leading cement, aggregates and RMC producers with sales of CHF 13.2 billion and 47.000 employees in 2004. A large acquisition in 2005 increased this number significantly. The global brand Holcim was introduced in 2001.
Sustainable development is a core ele-ment of Holcim’s vision and mission. Holcim’s mission in this area is to be the world’s most re-spected and attractive company in its industry – creating value for all our stakeholders. Therefore, Holcim recognizes that long-term sustainability of the business depends on its decisions to also meet environmental and social per-formance criteria. It is a business reality that most deci-sions within worldwide operations touch upon the inter-dependent economic, environmental and social factors – the “triple bottom line” of sustainable development.
In seeking the best balance of outcomes for the business, Holcim carefully examines the costs and benefits to main-tain a balance between local and global priorities. The nature of the business requires Holcim to take long-term decisions that affect all three factors.
- Economically, the Group operates within an extremely capital-intensive industry.
- Environmentally, making cement requires large-scale mineral extraction operations and highly energy-intensive production plants, which may leave substantial environmental footprints
- Socially, Holcim plants are important contributors to local economies and community well being, yet the activities also have an impact on the lives of those communities.
Holcim is a member of the World Business Council for Sus-tainable Development and has signed the UN Global Com-pact in 2003. They are listed in the Dow Jones Sustain-ability Index and FTSE4Good.

Background on the Holcim Foundation:
The Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction was formed in 2003 and is based in Zurich, Switzerland. It is committed to reinforcing public awareness of the enormous im-portance architecture, enginee-ring, and construction have in achieving a sounder and more sustainable future.
Meeting the rising needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs is society's greatest challenge and radically different ap-proaches are demanded of the construction sector to create a truly sustainably built environment. It is the mission of the Holcim Foundation to select and support initiatives that combine sustainable construction solutions with architectural quality and enhanced quality of life beyond technical solutions.
The objective of the Holcim Foundation is the non-com-mercial promotion and development of sustainable con-struction, regionally as well as globally. Utilizing the global reach of the Holcim Group, it wants to accelerate progress toward sustainable construction, encouraging initiatives in support of sustainable approaches to the provision of hou-sing and infrastructure in industrializing and industrialized nations alike.
The newly launched Holcim Awards competition will award prizes (US$ 2 million total) to projects that best meet the target issues of sustainable construction in five indepen-dent geographical regions and globally.

If you would like to engage with the work of Christoph Moellers or get to know more about Holcim and the Hocim Foundation please visit www.holcim.com,
If you would like to know more about the Holcim Awards please visit www.holcimawards.com,
or, for more specific opportunities, contact joanna.stefanska@myimpact.ch or wolfgang.hafenmayer@myimpact.ch directly.