New materials

The Colosseum in Rome has been standing for nearly 2000 years. One of the reasons is the natural substance that binds the building blocks together – pozzolan. By learning from nature we can both build better and emit less CO₂.

Almost everything we build and use comes from materials that are industrially produced. Cement, metals, chemicals and composites are the building blocks of today’s infrastructure. The problem is that their production leads to considerable emissions of greenhouse gases. For instance, as much as four percent of the world’s total CO₂ emissions come from cement factories. In searching for other materials that can reduce industry’s CO₂ footprint we have a lot to learn from nature. Instead of cement we can, for example, use the natural pozzolan aplite to make concrete. This way, concrete is produced simply by crushing aplite, grinding it and mixing it with water, a process which produces a fraction of the emissions from normal cement.

The strongest material made by man so far is kevlar. This is made by boiling oil and sulphuric acid at 750 degrees under pressure, which leads to large greenhouse-gas emissions. By comparison, spiders make entirely natural fibres that are stronger than kevlar and at the same time naturally bio-degradable. Just think if we could learn the secret of the spiders!