17th April 2024
Green steel and cement alternatives
Steel, cement and concrete are major contributors to global climate emissions using manufacturing process that are challenging to green. Therefore one approach to safeguarding the environment is to reduce the use of new steel, cement and concrete.
This could be by not wantonly discarding things before the end of their lifespan. Where I live, it is not infrequently that someone will buy a house only to knock it down and replace it with a new one. This unnecessarily adds to local carbon emissions. The same can also be true of commercial buildings. Simply demolishing an office building to replace it with another is a poor use of resources.
Where buildings or other structures are of necessity demolished, the prudent use of resources would see the different building materials being salvaged and reused. Equally before demolishing a structure, consideration could be given to re-purposing the building – upcycling!
The same approach of making full use of an item over its lifespan could equally apply to vehicles, domestic appliances, etc.
When building new structures, alternative materials with a lower carbon footprint can be used. This might be using timber for beams and columns, straw for insulation, compressed clay for bricks as well as recycling materials from other buildings. However if using naturally renewable resources such as timber, there has to be an awareness of the time frame and forwarded planning needed to ensure an ongoing supply of such materials. Trees may need to be up to 80 years old before being used to create structural building elements – and that timescale also implies large areas of land being set aside for trees (which is not a bad thing but needs to be planned).
Did you know you can buy bicycles made with a bamboo frame? – https://www.nethambamboobikes.co.uk/
Further reading:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/11/sustainable-mass-timber-green-building
The Green Tau 