Bill Gates reviews — and gets to the heart of — Sustainable Materials With Both Eyes Ope

Bill Gates reviews — and gets to the heart of — Sustainable Materials With Both Eyes Open: Energy is not the only factor that affects how much carbon we pump into the atmosphere. I recently read an excellent book about another key factor: how we make stuff. The book is called Sustainable Materials With Both Eyes Open, by a team at the University of Cambridge led by researchers Julian Allwood and Jonathan Cullen. (You can download it free on their site.) Although the book is probably too detailed for most general readers—its 350 pages are filled with dense diagrams and a lot of numbers—the authors’ conclusions are well worth understanding. They focus on the five materials that account for more than half of the world’s industrial carbon emissions (steel, cement, paper, plastic, and aluminum). As I’ve mentioned before, it’s impossible to imagine a modern world without these materials. Every year for example we produce more than 440 pounds of steel for every person on Earth, nearly half of which goes into buildings. And demand for all these materials will roughly double by 2050, as the world’s population grows and more people join the global middle class. Yet producing this stuff contributes significantly to climate change—and also creates other risks like reducing the supply of drinkable water and land that could be used for growing food.The question boils down to this: How can we meet the growing demand for materials without destroying the environment? Continue here: Reduce, Reuse, Retool | Bill Gates -- source link
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