Isn't at least a little benefit alright? It's not "significant benefit" or "nothing.
Indeed, I see the opposite. I see advocacy groups that are fighting against single use plastics using anti plastic straws campaigns as a way to spark conversations about other kinds of single use plastics.
> At face value, these efforts seem benevolent, but they obscure the real problem, which is the role that corporate polluters play in the plastic problem. This clever misdirection has led journalist and author Heather Rogers to describe Keep America Beautiful as the first corporate greenwashing front, as it has helped shift the public focus to consumer recycling behavior and actively thwarted legislation that would increase extended producer responsibility for waste management.
> For example, back in 1953, Vermont passed a piece of legislation called the Beverage Container Law, which outlawed the sale of beverages in non-refillable containers. Single-use packaging was just being developed, and manufacturers were excited about the much higher profit margins associated with selling containers along with their products, rather than having to be in charge of recycling or cleaning and reusing them. Keep America Beautiful was founded that year and began working to thwart such legislation. Vermont lawmakers allowed the measure to lapse after four years, and the single-use container industry expanded, unfettered, for almost 20 years.
It's become a recent obsession of mine.
* has a long history of use (no research needed)
* is eco friendly (in fact sequesters carbon)
* cheap
* readily available
* pliable material that is forgiving to build with, even for novices
* quick to erect walls
* is a waste material - usually ploughed back into fields or burned
* has very impressive thermal and sound insulation, so no additional insulation is needed, unlike a concrete walled home or building
I could go on....
Of course not every building or structure can be made from straw bales, but many houses, warehouses or smaller commercial buildings could be. It's a very low hanging fruit in the battle against climate change.
https://www.amazon.com/Building-Straw-Bales-Self-Builders-Su...
So this is really not accurate (and standard fire codes have accepted this).
The bigger problem is that people don't like giving up so much of their footprint to 18-inch-thick walls.
An issue with these new cements is that there is no economic incentive for companies to change production processes and switch.
We could solve these issues “today” in a sense. Creating new carbon neutral building materials that last as long as current stuff seems like a huge risk.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
While I like the idea of attaching monetary costs to otherwise ignored externalities, I don't see the carbon tax having any chance of being fairly and effectively implemented.
This is a fully general counter-argument against doing anything.
iirc Canada has a carbon-tax and its working fine?
For me it's in the bucket of "problems which don't matter till we solve electricity". Clean, cheap electricity == clean, cheap concrete.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concre...
This podcast has a couple of interesting mentions on low carbon concrete - https://www.npr.org/transcripts/923966126
[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/engineers-you-ca...
Flyash, and other pozzolanic industrial wastes. There are literally mountains of it.
Problem? There is no "standard flyash," every power station uses a bit different fuel. Same for industrial wastes.
Second option are natural geopolymers, but they are not that common, and coincidentally, most of countries with a lot of geopolymer deposits are rather rich, and that undercuts economic incentives.
https://www.graphene-info.com/graphene-based-concrete-used-c...
Is there any research being done into alternatives that will scale to what we use concrete for? I've seen alternative home building methods, and different urban planning can reduce the need for large buildings that need it, but I haven't seen good alternatives for roads, tunnels, bridges, etc. Steel sometimes works but has its own problems and is more expensive.