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Post by Tringa on Mar 7, 2019 17:51:18 GMT
I saw this in Nature recently, though I think it made the news elsewhere -
If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world.
A sobering thought and I do not have any solutions. We are, at present at least, reliant on concrete and therefore cement.
Dave
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Post by Cotham Marble on Mar 8, 2019 11:01:48 GMT
I saw this in Nature recently, though I think it made the news elsewhere -
If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world.
A sobering thought and I do not have any solutions. We are, at present at least, reliant on concrete and therefore cement.
Dave
Focus on fuel as the only source of CO2 is a bit of a cover for politicians, to do anything meaningful to reduced the rate of climate change, let alone reverse it is going to require subtantial reductions in consumption across the globe, and not a single Government is even attempting to broach what that means economically, with the whole global economic system based on perpetual growth. Technical fixes on things like cement production may help a little, and for now are all we've got but without reduction in consumption as well, the problem remains overwhelming.
A further issue is the use of sand in concrete - it may seem improbable but the best building sand exists in fairly small bands along coastal margins that are accessible to shallow depth dredging, and the total volume of that sand is limited. In a double whammy removing this coastal sand exposes inshore land to greater storm stress, errosion and flooding, just at the time when sea levels are rising. There is now a billion $ in illegally obtained dredged sand www.theguardian.com/global/2018/jul/01/riddle-of-the-sands-the-truth-behind-stolen-beaches-and-dredged-islands
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Post by rowanberry on Mar 8, 2019 14:54:48 GMT
Thank you for that link to the Guardian article, Cotham Marble.
That was the saddest, more depressing thing I've read in a long time... it was something I wasn't aware of, and even though it does depress me I think it's so important that we are all made aware of these things. It just never stops, does it?
The greedy me-me-me of the human race is limitless, and sometimes I really just want to give up. I try and recycle, do my best not to buy single-use plastics, (not one plastic bottle of Coke came into this house over Christmas) we try and buy organic when we can afford it... but when I read things like this, I feel as though what I'm doing isn't even a drop in the ocean. Not when there is corruption on this sort of scale.
To think of entire beaches being illegally dug up and sold to the building industry...
The council always puts out massive bags of sand on the playing fields near us every autumn, (to put around the goals? I have no idea) and every winter half of it is left (in the bags) for dogs to pee on. So wasteful, and so unnecessary.
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Post by Cotham Marble on Mar 10, 2019 17:29:15 GMT
The UK is pretty much self sufficient in aggregates including sand. Dredging, which seems to contribute about 40% of the annual production takes material from quite large near shore reserves, so for the present the issue of beach depletion doesn't immediately threaten the UK, though I guess sea level rise could change that. At least half the UK's sand and gravel comes from land based operations, these do have significant environmental impacts, although an awful lots of wetland, lake and pond features many of which are of significant wildlife value have resulted from restoration of sand and gravel extraction so there are judgements to be made about what harm is involved and what benefits there might be.
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