- Italcementi Group

The New York Times recently praised the innovative value of TX Active®. In a scoreboard published by the magazine of the US daily, TX Active® is named as one of the 70 most innovative ideas of 2007 and is the only product made in Italy to be included. “This year,” says the magazine, “A new weapon against smog was introduced in the United States: cement. Called TX Active®, the product can literally “kill” pollution.”

The cement’s chemical composition is enhanced with TX Active®, which, in the light, can neutralize some harmful pollutants. When exposed to sunlight or ultraviolet light, cement surfaces containing TX Active® are activated, oxidizing pollutants. Nitrogen and sulfur oxides, for example, are transformed into nitrates or sulfates. So another advantage of the cement is that it keeps surfaces clean.
“This unique, all-Italian product was introduced in the USA at the beginning of the year,” says Enrico Borgarello, Italcementi’s head of Research & Development, “and has already won major plaudits from designers, architects and constructors.”

TX Active® has also just been selected for inclusion in the 2007 Green Spec Directory, the USA’s leading national directory of environmentally preferred building materials, which, on a world scale, lists only 2,100 products. A new edition of the directory is drawn up every year by the monthly newsletter Environmental Building News (EBN), based on rigorous criteria developed over the past 15 years. The Green Spec Directory does not carry advertising, since it is supported exclusively by users of the information.Environmental Building News, founded in 1992, is the most widely respected newsletter in the green building field in the USA.

What makes a product “green”? How can the relative greenness of different products be evaluated?
The qualifications required for a listing in the Green Spec Directory are based on a series of specific standards. Admission is the result of an extensive submission and approval process lasting from three months to one year, with products evaluated individually for a wide range of environment qualities.
The EBN thresholds have evolved over time in line with developments in the standards applied by users, and consequently the products listed in the Green Spec Directory also change.

One of the assessment guidelines is product consistency with the requirements of LEED - Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the USA’s most important and stringent energy and environmental rating system for implementing sustainable design in American buildings.

In this connection, the Italcementi project team for ITCLab, the company’s new Research & Innovation Center designed by US architect Richard Meier and currently being built near Bergamo, is working on a program to maximize the center’s environmental performance and economic returns in order to obtain LEED certification. Built with materials using TX Active®, the ITCLab will be a reference model for sustainable architecture in Europe and an innovation benchmark for architects and designers.