ATLAS 21 - Material

Concrete

The formula for making concrete is simple. And the ingredients required are easy to obtain: ce­ ment is made with limestone and clay, gravel or sand and water. Stirring these materials together produces a wet mixture that can be formed into any shape – and is incredibly strong and fireproof once it has hardened. This makes concrete an ideal building mate­ rial: seven out of every ten people in the world live in buildings constructed using concrete. And it will continue to be an indis­ pensable building material in future. For this reason, efforts are underway to make concrete production more eco-friendly and, consequently, sustainable. A circular economy approach is already being adopted too: this involves crushing demolition concrete, removing any foreign material and then sorting it ac­ cording to particle size. It is then added to fresh concrete as aggregate.

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