Several years ago, John Mawson was looking at a big pile of rocks. They were by-products of his family-owned concrete and quarrying business, Mawsons. “The nature of our stone crushing activities is that a certain proportion of the material we crush ends up as a byproduct we can’t use,” he says. “We wondered what we could do to find a market or use for the product so that we could fully utilise it as a resource. Until then, we were just accumulating the rocks on site.”

In 1985 Mawsons teamed up with CSIRO to find a solution. They developed a termite protection and pest control system created from the unwanted rocks. By 1991, their first product – aptly named Granitgard – was available as a physical barrier used for termite protection.

For Mawson, it was a solution to a problem he had grappled with for 40 years. “We’ve tried to do a number of things with the by-product,” he says. “Our quarries are in country areas which limits what we can do. If we were in metropolitan areas, we might have been able to use the material in making asphalt. But here, there are no asphalt manufacturers nearby.

“We also tried to use it in aerated concrete but when CSIRO helped us to find a way to use it as pesticide-free termite protection, we thought that had a good ring to it. Otherwise, the rocks would have just piled up on our sites.We couldn’t even give them away.”

Wearing the right label

Granitgard boasts the Good Environmental Choice Label from the Australian Environmental Labelling Association. “We wanted to establish our credentials,” says Mawson. “Sustainability and environmentally-friendly products are terms that are bandied about, particularly in the building industry. With termite protection and pest control, there are many companies who say their pesticides are environmentally-friendly – but those two words shouldn’t go together. We wanted independent assessment to verify our environmental claims.”

However, Mawson admits it’s a challenge to change the mindset of many players in the building industry. “Our main focus now is in continuing to make builders aware of the sustainable options they have,” he says. “These products work and they are not expensive. They may not be cheaper in the short term but they are definitely cheaper in the long run because the pesticides currently used are short-term pesticides. This means they need to be re-applied. Whereas Granitgard gives people an alternative to having buildings that are chemically dependent.”

Mawsons continues to work with CSIRO and recently developed a new product. Based on the same principle of using a by-product of another process – this time, bitumen and sawdust – the result is Blockaid, which went on the market in 2003. This is a water-based, brush-on termite barrier.

While Granitgard and Blockaid only account for approximately 5% of Mawson’s revenue, Mawson believes it was the right decision to enter these new markets. “The quarry industry isn’t renowned for being ‘freaky and green’,” he says. “But we believe that every industry should consider their environmental responsibility. Sustainability is a concept that should be mainstream, not peripheral to what you do.”

www.mawsons.com.au