Much as has been said about the damage wrought on nature by too much fossil fuel and plastic, there are other environmental dangers as virulent – if not more so. One of these is concrete.
By now the majority of people realize that the humankind has wrought irreparable harm on the Earth and has by no means stopped to do so. Too much of fossil fuels and plastic around is generally regarded as the chief source of danger to the environment, and there’s no denying the fact. The gases emanated by burning fossil fuels add to the dangers of global warming, and plastic is being dumped into the oceans.
Nonetheless, there are other hazards that can be even more insidious than plastic waste and fossil fuels and other stuff. For one, concrete. We have used it for so long – actually, for endless years – that no-one gives a thought to how destructive it can be.
It really needs looking into – just think that considering that water is the substance used most often, concrete is the leader among the artificial substances we use daily. If we used a yearly expenditure of concrete in one country, we could cover up the whole of Great Britain. The industry of concrete emits carbon in such quantities that – it supposedly being an imaginary country – it would only lose in the emission to the United States and China.
The US was – and had long been – an undisputed leader in the output of concrete until, quite recently, China stepped up on it and started producing concrete in a big way. During three years China produced concrete in the amount compared to the US’s century-long concrete output. According to expert statistics the whole amount of concrete on the planet has already outstripped the weight of the Earth’s trees with bushes included – just to think about it makes one giddy.
That means we have all the reasons for concern – for concrete is not nature’s gift to us, we produce it, and the production process affects the environment adversely. In fact, up to 8% of all the CO2 on the globe is the result of concrete making. What’s more, the process uses up a lot of water – of all the water that goes for industrial uses 10% is required for making concrete. It is very much for all countries, but if we take into account that fact that concrete can be produced in places where water is scant, this quantity of water spent is disconcerting.
