Sustainability

At Lewis, we recognize that our organization’s greener business practices and jobsite operations are only part of the equation.

The biggest opportunity resides with reducing the embodied carbon impact of the structures we put in place. This covers emissions related to extracting, manufacturing, and transporting the building materials we ultimately use, as well as the impacts of construction and disposal.

In 2024, Lewis became the first general contractor in the Pacific Northwest to commit to reducing the embodied carbon impact of self-perform concrete operations from an established baseline by 5% for the concrete placed on all projects. We’ve met with major local concrete suppliers and structural engineering partners to discuss opportunities to use lower-carbon mixes that minimize the amount of cement with little-to-no increased costs.

We’re also developing test cases for the use of cement replacements—or supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs)—including high volumes of typical industrial byproducts like fly ash and slag and new SCMs being added to the market. In addition, we are testing mixes with alternate materials like biochar that would otherwise release carbon and methane and which are now captured in concrete. We’ve received approval to use these non-standard mixes on active projects. We continue to test new low-carbon mixes to better understand their viability in standard construction applications.