The road to climate hell is paved with concrete

Concrete has profoundly improved the quality of human life, but the same material that shelters us from the elements wreaks havoc on the environment. This is part one of a series examining how the materials and construction industries are racing to reduce concrete’s environmental impact.

[Photos: zhaojiankang/iStock/Getty Images Plus, Dmitrii Balabanov/iStock/Getty Images Plus]

If you’re reading this, chances are you are now either touching concrete or touching something that is touching concrete. By weight, the material makes up 46% of everything humans manufacture. But for most of us concrete remains hidden in plain sight: We live and work in it, step on it and drive on it, but we walk through the concrete world the way a city kid first walks through a forest. We see shape and color but don’t think much how it all connects.

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