"The cement industry is responsible for 8 percent of global carbon emissions -- triple the emissions of the aviation industry".
"Let’s do a quiz: After water, what is the most-used material in the world? Is it steel? Wood? Aluminum? Plastic?
The answer, it turns out, is concrete. Concrete, a blend of water, sand, gravel and cement, has helped build everything from the Roman Pantheon to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. We walk on concrete, drive on it, live in it. According to one estimate, more of the planet’s mass is locked up in concrete than it is all of the planet’s trees, bushes and shrubs.
And making all that concrete also emits an enormous amount of carbon dioxide.
This is thanks to cement, effectively the chemical “glue” that holds all the components of concrete together. “Concrete is the cake, and cement is the flour,” said Randolph Kirchain, the co-director of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub. Although cement is only about 10 percent of concrete by mass, it makes up the lion’s share of concrete’s carbon emissions."
Shannon Osaka reports for the Washington Post June 27, 2023.
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