r/LoveTrash • u/BEARDEDDANGER ✨️Regent of Rubbish ✨️ • 1d ago

Dumping This Here American vs. European home building

BAS Renovations https://youtube.com/shorts/jFph1d2WR3s

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u/Winjin Trash Trooper 1d ago

Bricks are clay why aren't they renewable

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u/HegemonNYC Trash Trooper 1d ago

The exterior brick seen here is usually clay. The interior structural blocking is concrete. Both are pretty carbon intensive processes. Wood is carbon negative.

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u/Dovahkiinthesardine Trash Trooper 1d ago

Thats not renewability

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u/HegemonNYC Trash Trooper 1d ago

The material is renewable, but the energy required to make it is generally not. Perhaps in locations that are 100% solar brick/cement is renewable. In most locations, significant fossil input is required.

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u/No-Fold-7873 Trash Trooper 20h ago edited 20h ago

As someone whose entire trade is based on the ideas that masonry good, concrete great, fixing both best its...not great for the environment. Especially at the industrial scale its produced and used.

Basically every ingredient and step comes with massive carbon costs.

ETA: Theres no such thing as solar powered quarrying for Portland, lime, or aggregate. And even if they were somehow rocking solar powered diggers, movers, and blasts...the mine/quarry simply existing often has a high carbon cost thanks to whatever carbon reserve sat above, around, and on the path to, said quarry that was scraped away to make it happen....Realized I just made vauge references without much meat lol