Sustainable Environments - Pacific Southwest Concrete Alliance

Sustainable Environments

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Why Sustainability Concrete & LEED® Green Links

Why Concrete for Sustainability?

Concrete is in tune with the environment. From homes to office buildings to highways, using concrete as a construction material actually helps protect our natural resources and affords unique benefits to consumers. From an environmental standpoint, concrete has a lot to offer.

Concrete is environmentally friendly in a variety of ways. The ingredients of concrete (water, aggregate, and cement) are abundant in supply and take a lesser toll in their extraction than other construction materials.

Quarries, the primary source of raw materials, can be easily reclaimed for recreational, residential, or commercial use. Or they can be restored to their natural state.

As a nearly inert material, concrete is an ideal medium for recycling waste or industrial byproducts. Many materials that would end up in landfills can be used instead to make concrete. Blast furnace slag, recycled polystyrene, and fly ash are among materials that can be included in the recipe for concrete and further enhance its appeal. Waste products such as scrap tires and kiln dust are used to fuel the manufacture of cement. And even old concrete itself can be reborn as aggregate for new concrete mixtures.

Another environmental plus for concrete is energy efficiency. From manufacture to transport to construction, concrete is modest in its energy needs and generous in its payback. The only energy intensive demand is in the manufacture of portland cement, typically a 10-15% component of concrete. Since the materials for concrete are so readily available, concrete products and ready-mixed concrete can be made from local resources and processed near a jobsite. Local shipping minimizes fuel requirements for handling and transportation.

35-story Millennium Tower under construction in the Battery Park City residential district of Lower Manhattan

Once in place, concrete offers significant energy savings over the lifetime of a building or pavement. In homes and buildings concrete’s thermal mass, bolstered by insulating materials, affords high R-factors and moderates temperature swings by storing and releasing energy needed for heating and cooling. Rigid concrete pavement design means heavy trucks consume less fuel. And the light reflective nature of concrete makes it less costly to illuminate.

Further commendable characteristics of concrete are waste minimization and long life. Whether cast-in-place or precast, concrete is used on an as-needed basis. Leftovers are easily reused or recycled. And concrete is a durable material that actually gains strength over time, conserving resources by reducing maintenance and the need for reconstruction.

A reliable and versatile product for centuries, concrete paves the way toward an environmentally secure future for successive generations here on Earth.

Downloadable literature on the Sustainability of Concrete is availble from the Environmental Council of Concrete Organizations website at www.ecco.org (this link connects to the literature).

Although the Romans may not have had Sustainability in mind when they constructed the Coliseum, the durability of this concrete structure represents a significant success in building sustainably.

Why Sustainability?

A significant part of the answer for the recent surge in concern for environmentally friendly building practices lies in the heightened sensitivity amongst the general public regarding how we interact with the environment around us - are we exploiting it or are we attempting to live in harmony with it so it will be sustained for generations to come.

Over the past 10 years, and in tandem with this rising public concern, the professional design community has also played its part in this important process by challenging the status quo thinking and approaches held for so long, as they continue to design the built environment. Many have banded together to raise new standards of responsible design choices through associations such as the US Green Building Council. The USGBC's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certification Program® is one example of a number of design standards being embraced throughout the world as the construction design community takes steps to self-impose more environmentally sensitive design criteria to aspire to. These new criteria, however, include concepts that have been around for a long time but were not embraced because there was not the will or motivation to do so. They include such considerations as life-cycle assessment, indoor air quality (IAQ), best management

practices (BMPs), and the long-term extrapolations of the environmental and energy costs of the projects they design.

The Sustainability or Green Movement has gained added momentum as well with corporations entering the fray. These organizations are adopting Green Building practices for reasons such as corporate image (i.e. being perceived by the general and consuming public as responsible corporate citizens), as well as the positive impact integrating such design methods into their facilities has on their bottom line (e.g. reduced energy consumption, higher workforce productivity). Not surprisingly, a quickly growing number of both public agencies and private enterprises are taking heed of the Sustainability Movement and now recognize that it is good business to be perceived as being environmentally sensitive.

Concrete & LEED®

We invite you to explore the important contributions that the most used construction material on earth is making to the environment in which we live every day. To gain an insight into the views of the National Ready Mix Concrete Association on this topic please review our objectives & goals in the NRMCA Sustainability Initiatives document.

Additionally, the Ready Mixed Concrete (RMC) Research Foundation has recently produced the Ready Mixed Concrete Industry LEED® Guide which will assist you as your team explores the many LEED® Points that concrete construction contributes to your project in the areas of:

Sustainable Sites
Water Efficiency
Energy & Atmosphere
Materials & Resources
Indoor Environmental Quality

Other key resources to identify the LEED® Points Concrete Construction will allow you to acquire are the Portland Cement Association's (PCA's) "Concrete Thinker", Concrete Thinking and Structural Concrete and LEED® sites. Additionally, as mentioned above, the Environmental Council of Concrete Organizations has a number of excellent documents that explain the Green Attributes of Concrete.

Five Ways Concrete Helps Build Green:

1. Concrete optimizes energy performance.
2. Concrete contains recycled materials.
3. Concrete creates sustainable sites.
4. Concrete is manufactured locally.
5. Concrete builds durable structures.

Environmental, Green Building, Sustainable Building and Concrete Links