Concrete seems pretty inoffensive.
It just looks like mud, and appears to do nothing except sit there and harden. The fact is, though, concrete is the world’s third-largest source of man-made carbon dioxide. Its production process accounts for at least 5% of the CO2 our species pumps into the atmosphere annually. Apparently, however, it doesn’t have to be that way. Two companies are now using different technologies that not only make concrete carbon-neutral, they actually make it carbon-negative.
Calera’s CMAP process
Calera is a California-based company that converts the carbon in industrial flue emissions (i.e: smoke stack output) into components of concrete and asphalt. The process is called Carbonate Mineralization by Aqueous Precipitation, or CMAP, and involves running flue gases through pH-adjusted seawater or alkaline brine water. The chemical qualities of the water convert the CO2 to calcium and/or magnesium carbonate, which is then precipitated from the water and dried, using the heat already being released from the flue. These solidified minerals can be used as cement or aggregate, two of the three ingredients in concrete (the third being water). The process is said to remove 70-90% of CO2 from the gases, and every ton of the resultant building materials contains up to half a ton of captured carbon.
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