Concrete is the most widely used man-made material, and second only to water as the most-consumed resource on Earth. Incredibly, 7.3 billion cubic metres of concrete is poured every year, accounting for 8 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions.
While greener concrete may help curb some of the environmental damage done by our favourite building material, we will probably need even more of it. After all, our growing global population, which is expected to top 9.7 billion by 2050, will need new homes and we will need efficient ways to maintain current houses and infrastructure too.
Self-healing concrete is one part of the solution to this global challenge. Engineers have developed forms of it that contain capsules which release a healing agent to fix cracks when they are split open. Using this new wonder material could save millions of pounds every year in maintenance costs, not to mention disruption caused by repairs to tunnels, bridges and other concrete...