New Mexico Dirtbags / What's New

The economics of earthbags vs. cinder blocks
(or: what you're really buying)

The cement industry, both nationally and internationally, is under fire & sweating bullets in ways it's never before imagined. Starting in 2007, revelations about the industry's "hidden costs" began to receive some wide mainstream reportage & investigation (refer to links
at the bottom of this page).

Facts:
•    Portland cement manufacture is responsible for some 5% of CO2 emissions worldwide.
•    Portland cement manufacture is the 4th largest source of mercury contamination in the US.
•    Portland cement kilns are phenomenal energy consumers, needing to be heated to temperatures of 2,700-3,000 degrees Fahrenheit in order to convert raw materials into their end product
•    Under the auspices of the EPA, many cement manufacturers have been using highly toxic waste to fuel their kilns - the belief being that the high heat destroys or breaks down the toxins & pathogens. Some "reasonable allowances" in excessive emissions have been permitted in a "greater good"rationale.
•    Air emissions from portland cement manufacture (specifically referred to as CKD, or cement kiln dust) contain - besides mercury -
hydrocarbons, hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, particulates, and various heavy metals, including arsenic, lead, chromium, cadmium, and
molybdenum.

Meanwhile, water used in the manufacture or portland cement has a pH value of 12 or above, making it phenomenally caustic.
Both unconstrained runoff & incidental seepage into the soil, and ends up in groundwater, aquifers, and waterways.

In response, the concrete industry in this country has joined forces and formed the “Concrete Sustainability Initiative” – under the auspices of the WBCSD (World Business Council for Sustainable Development). Comprised of some 200 multinational corporations, it enjoys privileged seats (and major influence) with the World Bank, the WTO (World Trade Organization), the IMF (International Monetary Fund), and the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development).

Members of the WBCSD includes corporations such as Alcoa, Chevron, General Motors, DuPont, 3M, Deutsche Bank, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Gazprom, BP, Wal-Mart and Royal Dutch Shell.

To give them credit, the concrete industry is (after having the writing on the wall read to them) actually making some progress in reducing emissions & releases, and even coming up with some alternative methods & materials (such as using rice hulls) to create “greener” concrete.
However - as is so often the case - real (not token) environmental reform tends to be measured in decades, with a great deal of foot-dragging, court appeals, dithering about the data produced by "our experts" vs. "their experts". In the meantime, the industry continues to grow, and their chief sense of responsibility remains to their stockholders.

Despite whatever present or future regulations that domestic concrete may find itself saddled with, countries like China & India are still thumbing their noses at the global call for reduction in emissions. Worse, many Western concrete manufacturers, finding that they can’t
keep up with ever-more-stringent regulations at home, are going to Eastern Europe and Russia and the Ukraine, buying old cement plants
for a song, and skirting said regulations.

Where do those $1.00 concrete blocks at Home Depot and Lowe’s come from?
If they’re made domestically, then the true cost must include the impact to our air, our water, our fish & wildlife, our health, and our out-of-control energy consumption (with the result of frantic calls by politicians for more coal-burning & nuclear power plants.
On the other hand, if these "big box" concrete blocks are made overseas, then their true cost is the impact to the environment and the infrastructure that impacts the people of the countries in which they're made, plus immense transportation costs to ship them to American ports and then truck them over American highways (more pollution).

And a final thought: where do cinder blocks go when they die? Broken into rubble, they're dumped in solid waste landfills all around America (landfills themselves facing a crisis), where mercury and other contaminants are leached into water tables (and into our drinking water).

Personally? We think earthbags make a lot more sense.

Some links:

http://www.epa.gov/region8/superfund/ut/portlandcement/

http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/industrial/special/ckd/index.htm

http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2009/06/17/proposed-epa-cement-kiln-regs

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/business/worldbusiness/26cement.html

http://www.voanews.com/english/Science/2009-07-02-voa39.cfm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_cement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Business_Council_for_Sustainable_Development

http://archive.greenpeace.org/toxics/documents/altdetoxCement.pdf