InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger than steel

Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by bee_rider on Monday May 19, 2025 @09:56AM (#44029981)

I think this is sort of a more interesting question than the responses you got made it out to be.

Yes, of course, stone doesn’t really grow back on the timescales that we care about. Yes, stone not “bio” in any sense really.

But the goal of the law is not to make biology or geology points. It is to reduce the embodied carbon of new construction. I guess the determination was made that stone has some carbon cost… maybe it comes from the mining?

Or maybe they are trying to kickstart, specifically, a new industry in the field of growable construction material. Maybe they figure stone mining is already well developed tech anyway.

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by dopidopHN on Monday June 02, 2025 @06:12AM (#44157312)

Cinder blocks. That what you are missing here.

Lots of house in France are made of that. Not “rocks” and that is a co2 intensive process to produce concrete.

See : Lafarge

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by zdragnar on Monday May 19, 2025 @08:43AM (#44029257)

Stone is just minerals. There's no organic (bio) component in stone at all.

Likewise, there's nothing renewable about stone. Our primary source is digging it out of the ground.

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by sidewndr46 on Monday May 19, 2025 @09:17AM (#44029545)

Isn't that just a matter of perspective? Most of the stone where I live is made of limestone which is from dead organisms. To the point that you can just break it open and find fossils throughout it.

That isn't renewable in the timeframe of humanity, but in the age of the universe it's renewable.

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by lukan on Monday May 19, 2025 @09:27AM (#44029650)

Good point, there are bio stones, but they are not renewable by our reference. But the vulcano stones are. And we have really lots of other stone underneath. No shortage of them. I would count them renewable.

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by generic92034 on Monday May 19, 2025 @12:26PM (#44031523)

If you are counting that as renewable then crude oil could be seen as renewable, too. ;)

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by sidewndr46 on Monday May 19, 2025 @01:25PM (#44032247)

Actually no. The situation that allowed that to happen, won't happen again in our biosphere. There are now microbes that break down decaying plant matter very quickly. So you won't ever get substantial amounts of oil being formed in the earth's crust.

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by soulofmischief on Monday May 19, 2025 @08:36AM (#44029196)

Where are we growing new stones?

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by lukan on Monday May 19, 2025 @08:44AM (#44029263)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortar_(masonry)

You can recycle them. And raw stones are not a rare thing and they do get formed new constantly inside the earth.

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by soulofmischief on Monday May 19, 2025 @10:49AM (#44030497)

I also took physical science courses in middle school. Just because new stones are formed within the earth's crust at some marginal rate does not mean that they are considered a renewable resource.

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by lukan on Monday May 19, 2025 @01:36PM (#44032416)

Have you every watched a vulcano spit out lava?

I wouldn't call that marginal. And vulcanoes are just the visible part of that process happening everywhere in the crust.

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by soulofmischief on Tuesday May 20, 2025 @10:55AM (#44042347)

We're talking about stone in general. Volcanic stone is one type of stone, which does not cover all of the applications of stone as used in buildings, masonry and other industries today. I also specifically addressed volcanic stones in a sister comment.

Some rate of formation is not enough to satisfy the commonly held definition of renewable resources. Google "is stone a renewable resource" for a jumping off point.

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by wsintra2022 on Monday May 19, 2025 @09:38AM (#44029763)

Iceland architects trying it out next to volcanoes, funnel the molten stuff into building material mounds of some kind

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by soulofmischief on Monday May 19, 2025 @10:50AM (#44030509)

I think that's pretty neat but lava stone is a very particular type of stone with particular properties, suited for specific applications, where as the typical stone you will see in masonry and building materials is not renewable.

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by zchrykng on Monday May 19, 2025 @10:34AM (#44030339)

If we run out of stone, we have lots of other problems.

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by soulofmischief on Monday May 19, 2025 @10:47AM (#44030485)

That's a non-sequitur. Stone is not considered a renewable resource, which is typically defined as a resource which naturally replenishes itself over time at a meaningful rate compared to the rate of consumption.

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by lukan on Monday May 19, 2025 @01:38PM (#44032457)

Do we really consume more stone, than gets relenished? Is that a assumption or well studied topic?

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by soulofmischief on Tuesday May 20, 2025 @12:46PM (#44043539)

It's my assumption based on the fact that we continually mine new portions of the earth over time. Trees and other life exist within regenerative chemical cycles, whereas rock formation is a physical process that consumes some limited supply of material on Earth. I would love to know more about this as well, if you come across any resources.

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by zchrykng on Tuesday May 20, 2025 @04:40PM (#44045686)

My point is that "renewable resource" is a fairly meaningless term when applied to stone. Sure, we technically have a finite amount of it on the planet, but we also can't possibly use it all up. Not unless we have technology that would allow us to travel outside the solar system, at which point the limited amount of stone is also moot.

Sure, it doesn't fit the definition, but there is also no reason to care that it doesn't.

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Re:InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger ... by danielheath on Monday May 19, 2025 @08:58AM (#44029377)

... where the mantle meets the crust?

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