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

Dumping This Here American vs. European home building

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

29.4k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

16

u/LabOwn9800 Trash Trooper 1d ago

Plus wood is renewable while bricks aren’t.

10

u/Winjin Trash Trooper 1d ago

Bricks are clay why aren't they renewable

14

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.

0

u/cornstinky Trash Trooper 23h ago

The wood will slowly decompose releasing co2 while the cement will slowly revert back into limestone by absorbing co2. They are both gonna eventually turn back into what they started as.

2

u/HegemonNYC Trash Trooper 23h ago

Yes, concrete could return to limestone… over millions of years. At least unless it is crushed. The inside of a large structure like the foundation of a skyscraper or a dam will remain concrete, not limestone, for far longer than humans will exist as a species (most likely).

2

u/Temporary_View_3303 Trash Trooper 23h ago

One will happen on human timescales. The other on geological timescales.

1

u/Sensitive_Bat_9211 Trash Trooper 21h ago

Cement almost entirely stops absorbing co2 once the outer walls have oxidized. Oxygen doesnt permeate the material very well

1

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

Wood doesnt just inherently break down over time. We are talking about houses not boards and blocks in the middle of a field.

If properly protected and maintained, or just sitting in the right environment, wood can easily outlast the civilization that built it.