Tartle Best Data Marketplace
Tartle Best Data Marketplace
Tartle Best Data Marketplace
Tartle Best Data Marketplace
October 1, 2021

Our Concrete Jungles Are Slowly Killing Us

Our Concrete Jungles Are Slowly Killing Us
BY: TARTLE

Concrete has become synonymous with urban development and progress. It’s responsible for creating shelters, protecting manmade infrastructures from natural disasters, making transportation easy, and more.

However, the environmental cost of creating concrete is often understated. It’s a convoluted process with plenty of extraction involved. As a finished product, concrete also makes cities hotter because it absorbs the heat of the sun, and traps gases from car exhausts and air conditioning units.

In addition, it separates us from our natural environment without providing an alternative for so many important ecological functions. The cost of creating concrete jungles is the loss of fertile soil, animal habitats, river systems, and lush greenery.  

Is it time to reinvent the concrete wheel?

What We Can Do With Concrete

One solution that is currently in the works is using concrete to store greenhouse gases back in the bedrock.

“If it's getting released from the ice, earth naturally in its own chemistry and set up, has these pockets. So if we put it back in the porous nature of the bedrock, we can store that and prevent it from being up in the atmosphere; so send it back down where it needs to go,” Alex explained.

Historical records indicate that the Romans were the first to deal with concrete. Despite the test of time, plenty of infrastructures remain standing today. One notable achievement was the creation of concrete that could withstand the test of coastal regions, where saltwater speeds up the process of degradation.

This wasn’t the case for Roman concrete, which even benefited from the microorganisms carried by the seawater. Alex described it as “a symbiotic relationship between the saltwater, the organisms, and the concrete itself.”

Process of Making Concrete

Is concrete worth the environmental trade-off? The process of manufacturing and maintaining it makes up around eight percent of the world’s annual carbon emissions. Components that go into the creation of concrete include silica, alumina, iron, limestone, and gypsum —- materials that are extracted from the Earth’s crust by diesel-powered machines and then processed in kilns that generate heat by burning coal or fossil fuels. 

The current strategy for producing concrete is incredibly complex and involves plenty of anaerobic processes. Convincing corporations to make changes to the way they create concrete will be a challenge because these entities are already accustomed to this traditional method. This means that they have invested time, money, labor, and effort into maintaining all the machinery and manpower needed to keep these environmentally degrading practices alive. 

It’s commodifying inefficiency, normalized and understated to avoid public clamor.

Some companies are already looking into making concrete a more environmentally friendly substance. A company based in Halifax, Canada named CarbonCure discovered a process that takes liquified CO2 from ammonia and ethanol plants, and injects it into wet concrete while it is being mixed. This increases the concrete’s compressive strength and replaces some of the cement used in the process.

It’s an opportunity to repurpose the waste product of other industrial plants while minimizing the amount of time used to form concrete in a kiln, which requires high amounts of heat and pressure — around 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit.

Since the system is simple and easy to deploy, CarbonCure has a strong selling point. Concrete manufacturers do not need to implement massive shifts in their processes just to become more eco-friendly; this strategy only requires a little extra hardware.

It’s All Dirty Work — In More Ways Than One

Convincing the concrete industry to clean itself up won’t be easy work. Alexander and Jason brush on how concrete plays a pivotal role in funding and facilitating criminal activity, pointing out the challenges in convincing malicious actors to invest in ecologically friendly alternatives; but the problem runs deeper than that as well.

Prominent websites such as Taylor & Francis Online, The Guardian, the World Economic Forum have released stories on the seedy underbelly of concrete and construction, labeling the material as “the most destructive material on earth” and “the dirtiest business.” 

It’s disheartening to think that even after this podcast, concrete isn’t a standalone villain we can all gang up against. We’ve got an entire industry to hold accountable and demand transparency from.

How TARTLE Can Help

Climate stability is one of TARTLE’s Big 7. While calling for action won’t be an easy feat, every small act we can generate towards this cause is a small step forward in the right direction. With the TARTLE platform, you have the opportunity to support groups, not-for-profits, or charitable organizations that work towards scientific research and development in this niche.

How much is your data worth?

Summary
Our Concrete Jungles Are Slowly Killing Us
Title
Our Concrete Jungles Are Slowly Killing Us
Description

Concrete has become synonymous with urban development and progress. It’s responsible for creating shelters, protecting manmade infrastructures from natural disasters, making transportation easy, and more.

Feature Image Credit: Envato Elements
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For those who are hard of hearing – the episode transcript can be read below:

TRANSCRIPT

Alexander McCaig (00:08):

Hello, everybody. Good morning. Welcome back to TARTLE Cast. I want to just really make sure that what we have to say is concrete.

Jason Rigby (00:18):

Yes. This is what we're talking about: concrete. And don't tune out.

Alexander McCaig (00:22):

Yeah. Please, don't tune out.

Jason Rigby (00:25):

There's actually going to be very, very interesting because we're going to get into what concrete does to you when you stand on it?

Alexander McCaig (00:32):

Oh! Interesting. What concrete does to me.

Jason Rigby (00:35):

As a person.

Alexander McCaig (00:36):

Do you know what happens when you put a battery [crosstalk 00:00:38]?

Jason Rigby (00:37):

A car battery?

Alexander McCaig (00:38):

Yeah.

Jason Rigby (00:38):

You put a big at 12 volt car battery on the concrete...

Alexander McCaig (00:42):

You'll [inaudible 00:00:42] that thing.

Jason Rigby (00:42):

You're going to wake up in the morning, if you put it overnight, and it's going to be nothing.

Alexander McCaig (00:47):

Oh no, why? That's so freaking interesting. So concrete is there's a magazine by Wired... All right, tune out. There's an article on Wired called, Concrete Is Awful for the Planet. Clever Chemistry Can Help.

Jason Rigby (01:04):

Read the subtitle. I love that part.

Alexander McCaig (01:05):

I was about to say, subtitle: Without it, our civilization would be nowhere. With it, the Earth is suffering. But what if concrete could be used to store climate-warming carbon? So, I've gotten into this idea before I've read a lot about it, that people are finding ways to actually pump-

Jason Rigby (01:25):

Pump up the jam.

Alexander McCaig (01:25):

... CO2 emissions and methane and stuff like that and store it back in the bedrock because if it's getting released from the ice, earth naturally in its own chemistry and set up, has these pockets. So if we put it back in the porous nature of the bedrock, we can store that and prevent it from being up in the atmosphere; so send it back down where it needs to go. Before we get into the scientific aspect of it, the Romans said something really interesting.

Jason Rigby (01:55):

I love this.

Alexander McCaig (01:56):

The Romans were the first to be dealing with concrete, typically, in a large sense on historical record, but their concrete has still lasted to today, and very much so from coastal regions where there's been a high amount of salt and wear. We all know what salt does. If you've ever lived on the coast, you'd understand how much it just destroys everything in its path: saltwater.

Jason Rigby (02:18):

Yeah, have a car next to the beach.

Alexander McCaig (02:20):

A car, just rust, all that other stuff. But the way they had mixed their concrete, just as a fun fact, when the salt water contacted with it carrying its microorganisms, those microorganisms actually strengthened the concrete every time it was encased with the water.

Jason Rigby (02:37):

Oh, that's cool.

Alexander McCaig (02:38):

That's why it's lasted so long.

Jason Rigby (02:39):

Yeah, you can [crosstalk 00:02:40].

Alexander McCaig (02:40):

There's a symbiotic relationship between the saltwater, the organisms, and the concrete itself. It's pretty amazing.

Jason Rigby (02:46):

Yeah. And I think we could easily reverse engineer that. I was shocked at how many tens of billions of tons that is created. They were talking about that you could build a 100 foot wall of concrete around the equator. And then what was talk, what the article was talking about, which I thought was interesting, Nigeria and needs other fast developing nations, China, for instance... China's having to import sand because they ran out of sand, so concrete's... and the article talks about this... concrete is a wonderfully useful, but at what steep cost? Because it makes up about 8% of our annual carbon emissions.

Alexander McCaig (03:26):

To make concrete, first of all, I got to beat the earth up. I got to get people over there who are breathing, farting, eating, producing waste. I got to put this guy in a machine, a giant backhoe, which is going to require diesel to run this thing that's coming from some other refinery across the planet.

Alexander McCaig (03:49):

Then, once his backhoe's working, I got to start digging into the Earth's crust to pull up the proper amount of limestone for myself, and whatever types of mineral stone that I want in there. After I've done that, I have to move it to this big kiln after it's been crushed. And then, I got to take mechanical energy and crush this thing. That's got to run on something. Then, I got to heat it up to get the mix right.

Jason Rigby (04:10):

2,700 degrees they said.

Alexander McCaig (04:12):

Wow! 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit. Do you know how much energy it costs? Think about a candle.

Jason Rigby (04:18):

And they said, guess where the heat for those kilns is generated.

Alexander McCaig (04:22):

Oh, where? Please tell me.

Jason Rigby (04:23):

Burning coal or other dead dinosaur fossil fuels.

Alexander McCaig (04:27):

So we're using all these anaerobic processes to create concrete, which is already energetically poor.

Jason Rigby (04:37):

Well, the worst part... not to interrupt you... the worst part is the second, is that fine gray powder generates gaseous carbon dioxide as a by-product.

Alexander McCaig (04:47):

Right. Because-

Jason Rigby (04:49):

So you're not just... You just had all that stuff and creating it, but then now you've actually got the product and it's releasing this gas.

Alexander McCaig (04:57):

It's funny. Limestone, like I said... Remember how they pump? The scientists are trying to pump CO2 and methane back into the bedrock. What do you think limestone's been holding down? CO2. So now you're going to crush it back up, what's it going to release? The same thing you're trying to put back into the earth. The same thing you're trying to prevent that is having a 50 to 55% effect because of human interaction on the climate of the planet.

Jason Rigby (05:24):

Yeah. And there's a Canadian company that they praise that is called CarbonCure Technologies. It's in Halifax, Canada's Atlantic coast. CarbonCure's entire the staff, they say, could fit in a school bus.

Alexander McCaig (05:40):

That's fun. So they're running lean.

Jason Rigby (05:42):

Yeah. They're running lean. Of course, I always picture Vancouver Island and that's where they're at, and in this really beautiful forest and rocky beaches and all that. But the beautiful part about this is that they said that... In the article, they go into the engineer that came up with all of this. But if you look at, he says... His name is Naveen and his team eventually figured out a process that takes liquified CO2 captured from places like ammonia and ethanol plants and inject it into wet concrete as it's being mixed. The CO2 chemically reacts with the [cement 00:06:22] and other ingredients in the mix re-mineralizing it into solid calcium carbonate, which helps bind the other ingredients, increases the concrete's compressive strength, and takes the place of some of the cement that would otherwise be required.

Alexander McCaig (06:35):

Okay. So rather than throwing this thing in a kiln, we're going to go to some other industrial plants, take their waste product, and then use that waste product, that liquid carbon dioxide, whatever it might be, and then apply it directly into the concrete rather than having to fuse it under high amounts of heat and pressure. And then, from that, that's how we can develop a system that would be more friendly. They think that if we can capture what's going on in these other industrial plants to feed the process and make it more efficient for developing concrete, that's going to be a benefit to our planet.

Jason Rigby (07:08):

Yeah. They created a really simple system to bring it into the field because you can do these in labs, but it's like, how would a person actually do this? A tank of carbon dioxide feeds into a pair of dorm fridge-size metal boxes stuff with valves and all that, which regulate the carbon dioxides flow into a hose, which sprays it into the mixing drum. The boxes are all made by a few... They get into this. The tricky part is figuring out the optimal dose of CO2 for different mixtures: the strength, weight, and appearance of concrete. For instance, if you had an airport runway compared to a shopping mall, it's going to be different that way, but-

Alexander McCaig (07:46):

Depending on how the pads poured.

Jason Rigby (07:48):

The simplicity of its system is one of CarbonCure's best-selling points. The concrete makers, who are its customers, don't have to change much for mixing and pouring at a construction site. They just add a little extra hardware. The whole system fits in a crate.

Alexander McCaig (08:02):

This is the hard part here. Do you know much about the concrete business?

Jason Rigby (08:09):

I've not a lot, but I've [crosstalk 00:08:11].

Alexander McCaig (08:10):

Most of it's run by the Mob.

Jason Rigby (08:12):

Oh. Oh, I know that. Yeah, on the East Coast. They had to, to bury the bodies.

Alexander McCaig (08:16):

You got to bury them somewhere. No, but in a legitimate sense, it's run by the Mob. It is a commodity. Now you're asking someone who's been doing something that makes them a great sum of money to spend more money because you think they're going to be incentivized to save the planet. I'm glad it's a good selling point. It's not going to work.

Alexander McCaig (08:38):

I'm not trying to be pessimistic here, but if these other individuals, if you're asking them to spend money on a business that's already on tight margins, do you think they're going to do that just to look good? No, they won't do it. It's like going into a paper company and say, "Oh, we can produce paper much more efficiently, but you have to have this huge cash outlay first to buy this box that changes how you produce your paper."

Jason Rigby (09:03):

They're going to be like, "No, [crosstalk 00:09:04]."

Alexander McCaig (09:04):

I'm like, "No, [crosstalk 00:09:04]. See you later. We're already doing it fine."

Jason Rigby (09:05):

"We've been building paper for how long?"

Alexander McCaig (09:08):

Yeah. "We've been making concrete for this long; it's working fine." That's the attitude. I've loved the fact that people are doing this, but isn't there a better substance than concrete in general?

Jason Rigby (09:19):

I think you could take something like this because it sets up in a day, it fits the size of a crate, or whatever. But I know European countries and stuff like that, some Forward Edge countries, not companies, but countries would implement something like this.

Alexander McCaig (09:33):

Yeah, most definitely.

Jason Rigby (09:34):

Like Germany, and stuff like that.

Alexander McCaig (09:35):

You know the differences [crosstalk 00:09:37]?

Jason Rigby (09:37):

Maybe not the mafia United States.

Alexander McCaig (09:39):

No. For some people there's a mindset of, "I'm willing to take the loss for the greater good. I'll have a net loss here in my production of whatever's going on because it's more important to protect the environment." But for others who are strictly economically incentivized, this sits out of their approach.

Jason Rigby (09:56):

Yeah. There's some big venture capitalists like Breakthrough Energy Ventures. That's a billion dollar fund.

Alexander McCaig (10:01):

You also have to remember-

Jason Rigby (10:02):

Bill Gates-

Alexander McCaig (10:02):

... those people want-

Jason Rigby (10:03):

... all these others, they're dumping money into this.

Alexander McCaig (10:05):

Of course they want to dump money into it. It's also a tax write off because it's considered one of those green investments. "I'm doing a good social backed investment." And these things are also tied into things like DAF: donor-advised funds. So, "I want to invest in not-for-profits, but I want the not-for-profit itself to get funding that it can work towards other investment projects."

Alexander McCaig (10:32):

So if people are doing these things, there's a huge market of people that are trying to invest their cash into it, so it's just like, why not go take from that pool? Just come up with a simple solution, but it's really a band-aid. Are you still ripping rock out of the earth at just prolific rates?

Jason Rigby (10:46):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (10:47):

Yes. Are you still pushing this stuff down and that is energetically terrible and still releasing CO2 into the year? Yes. Are you allowing these other industrial plants to continue to create ways because now they found an option to go store it somewhere? Yes. Nothing has been learned. Nothing has been really solved.

Jason Rigby (11:06):

Yeah. More than 200 concrete makers are using this new system and Singapore has adopted it. LinkedIn's Silicon Valley Campus, their new campus, use this process and also in Hawaii, which you're fixing to go to.

Alexander McCaig (11:25):

Yeah, to get lead certification [crosstalk 00:11:26].

Jason Rigby (11:27):

There's a stretch of-

Alexander McCaig (11:28):

Tax credit.

Jason Rigby (11:28):

... road in Hawaii that they tried it out on. And then, in Atlanta, that monster aquarium that they built and is super cool, that was CarbonCure-treated concrete. So, it's happening, but the 64,000 tons of emissions that's coming from these concrete companies, something has to be done about that.

Alexander McCaig (11:48):

Yeah. I find it interesting. I'd love to know actually how many concrete companies there are. But I got to tell you, cement production in the United States and worldwide from 2010 to 2020, if we look at 2020, there was globally 4.1 million metric tons of cement. Does anyone know what 1 million metric tons actually looks like? Multiply that by four. You can wrap it around the earth. And while you're doing that, you have to think, "Well, it had to come from somewhere." You have differences between concrete and cement, and the article we're talking about is, what, concrete.

Jason Rigby (12:41):

Right.

Alexander McCaig (12:43):

So, cement is manufactured through the high temperature heating of materials like silica, alumina and iron, which result in a material called clinker, which is then ground and mixed with limestone and gypsum to produce concrete. So before I even get to concrete, I have to make a cement mixture first, and then taking all these other elements and minerals to pump them in there and put them through their other [inaudible 00:13:07] whole other process. It's a fricking nightmare. It's so complicated just to get something done.

Alexander McCaig (13:12):

You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of nuclear submarines. Why do I say that? Nuclear submarines are like, "Okay, all we got to do is we have to have a fission pile of all these rods, nuclear fuel, and then we're going to use that to heat a large body of water that goes around it. And then with that large body of water, it's going to generate steam. We're going to push that steam through a turbine; that turbine's going to turn a dynamo; that dynamo's going to generate electricity; and the electricity's going to go to the prop."

Alexander McCaig (13:43):

By the time you're done, you only have 30% efficiency. There are much simpler ways to achieve construction material and doing these processes, but we are so whacked out in these old processes that have become commoditized. We've commoditized inefficiency.

Jason Rigby (13:58):

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes.

Alexander McCaig (13:59):

And these commodity of inefficiency that we have created is creating harm for us. Why do we not see that? We need to realize that we need to invest in the things that are actually creating that net loss.

Jason Rigby (14:10):

Well, it's the same in war. You can go into a place and just carpet-bomb the whole place and spend billions of dollars and just level out a whole city; or you can have a SEAL Team go in and take out the main leader.

Alexander McCaig (14:20):

Yeah and just be done. It's about efficiency.

Jason Rigby (14:23):

It's the same thing.

Alexander McCaig (14:24):

Yeah. And it's not-

Jason Rigby (14:25):

We're all about just laying a bunch of bombs down.

Alexander McCaig (14:28):

Yeah. And you can be efficient without ruining plant and human life, but that requires a different type of mindset.

Jason Rigby (14:37):

So tartle.co, Big 7: climate stability.

Alexander McCaig (14:41):

If you want to put money towards this specific cause of storing CO2 capture within cement, okay, well you can do that. You can donate towards groups, not-for-profits or charitable organizations, that are helping championing these specific things for scientific research in that area.

Jason Rigby (14:59):

How would I do that, Alex?

Alexander McCaig (15:00):

Oh, that's great. You go to tartle.co; you're going to sign up by clicking get started; go through the albeit brief process and then you're going to populate data packets. When you get paid for doing so, you share your earnings towards causes you care about.

Jason Rigby (15:13):

I love that. So, the data that I'm already creating through all these social media sites, and everything that I do-

Alexander McCaig (15:18):

Everything else.

Jason Rigby (15:19):

... I can share that data-

Alexander McCaig (15:21):

And earn from it.

Jason Rigby (15:22):

... and earn from it, and then I can take the earnings for myself if I need the money.

Alexander McCaig (15:26):

Yep. Or?

Jason Rigby (15:27):

Or I can say, "Hey, I want to help CarbonCure out." And then, I can-

Alexander McCaig (15:33):

Freaking do it.

Jason Rigby (15:34):

That's wild.

Alexander McCaig (15:35):

Yeah. Why not do it? That's the real question, why not? I'm not saying what CarbonCure's doing is wrong. I'm just saying they need a little bit of support and more of a push. Maybe they can go beyond the box. Maybe it can change the whole process of just finding a material that works way-way better than concrete.

Jason Rigby (15:52):

Well, we know what happens whenever things act... I mean, the greatest inventions of all time have happened by accident. So you need labs going constantly.

Alexander McCaig (16:01):

Penicillin?

Jason Rigby (16:02):

Yeah. Exactly.

Alexander McCaig (16:02):

You need to fund research, so that accidents occur.

Jason Rigby (16:05):

Yes. Because that seems to be the logical way in a weird way.

Alexander McCaig (16:10):

We need to fund accidents.

Jason Rigby (16:11):

So the more labs you have going United States...

Alexander McCaig (16:14):

And we're not talking Wuhan labs.

Jason Rigby (16:15):

No, no We don't...

Alexander McCaig (16:16):

We don't need it.

Jason Rigby (16:16):

We have one of those in North Carolina.

Alexander McCaig (16:18):

Yeah. We don't need anymore that.

Jason Rigby (16:19):

We won't talk about that.

Alexander McCaig (16:20):

Yeah, we won't talk about that.

Jason Rigby (16:21):

Because we're live.

Alexander McCaig (16:22):

Yeah. We got to go back; let's just worry about CO2.

Speaker 3 (16:34):

Thank you for listening to TARTLE Cast with your hosts, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby where humanity steps into the future and source data defines the path. What's your data worth?