Concrete is the most consumed man-made material on Earth. Each year, about three tonnes of concrete are used per person. While the environmental impact of man-made materials like plastics has been widely publicised for decades, the dramatic effects of concrete on the environment have been far less talked about.

Concrete is made up of water, cement, and a filler such as sand. The cement industry alone is responsible for about 8 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and the production of concrete consumes 10 per cent of the world’s industrial water. Furthermore, the amount of cement produced every two years is more than the amount of plastic produced over the past 60 years.

These environmental considerations led Associate Professor Pang Sze Dai and his team from the Centre for Advanced Materials and Structures at NUS Civil and Environmental Engineering to focus their efforts on developing greener, more sustainable concretes, with an aim to reduce this immense impact.

Read full article at NUS News

Photo credit: National University of Singapore