Report reveals sustainability surge: 73% of contractors already implementing practices

The report shows that construction professionals are taking measures to increase sustainability

Over the next five years, 50% of construction businesses expect to implement more sustainability practices while a further 32% will give it consideration.

The report, Constructing a better future by global IoT player Trackunit surveyed almost 13,000 industry professionals. It also revealed that 58% of construction professionals expect sustainability to become more ‘important’ over the next five years compared to just 26% who think it will diminish in importance.

The research shows that the contractor and equipment rental segments currently prioritise sustainability more than the equipment owner and dealer segments with 59% marking it out as ‘important’ compared to 43% and 51% respectively.

“What this clearly shows is that construction professionals are already very serious about sustainability and want to do what is right for their business and society as a whole,” said Trackunit CEO Soeren Brogaard. “It’s not really a surprise that contractors lead the way here given that they are very much at the sharp end of the construction supply chain which exerts significant pressure too.”

Seperate research from IBM has shown that 49% of global consumers in ten major economies having paid a premium for products branded as sustainable or socially responsible.

“With regulatory pressures, societal demands for better, cleaner construction practices and the UN’s 2030 targets on emissions reporting increasingly dominating agendas of government and businesses, this is only going to move in one direction over the next five years,” Brogaard said.

North American sustainability focus

Soeren Brogaard, CEO, Trackunit.

Among the report’s many other findings, the sharp differential in how North American construction professionals are viewing sustainability compared to their European counterparts is perhaps the most surprising.

More than a third (36%) of North Americans say sustainability is now ‘very important’ compared to 25% in Europe and that differential narrows only marginally when we include ‘important’ in that comparison for respective scores of 55% and 46%.

“We were aware that North American construction companies were definitely becoming more serious about sustainability and emissions reporting just because of the discussions we have with our customers on a regular basis,” said Brogaard.

“But this is the first time we’ve really uncovered hard, statistical data that validates this and takes us from an anecdotal sense of what is going on to something that is evidence based and clear.”

The full report can be downloaded here.