Love it or hate it? I’m one of those who love it, but dedicating this issue to concrete wasn’t my idea. It came from our technology editor, who reckoned there’s so much to say about concrete’s surprising history, problematic present and fascinating future.
Concrete is everywhere, the most obvious of human-made materials, and it’s been around since antiquity. Topping the world’s biggest companies you’ve never heard of are China’s enormous cement and concrete giants.
The world’s reliance on concrete is a problem. It’s a significant contributor to greenhouse gases and this raises some interesting technical, policy and even aesthetic questions. In this issue we’ll be looking at solutions to those problems.
It’s hard to find exact figures for concrete, but Statista says the world produces over four billion tonnes of the key component, cement, every year. That means a lot of carbon dioxide, and it’s doubly difficult to cut because its very chemistry makes...