#ClimateChange: Construction companies told to stop knocking down buildings. Making bricks and steel creates vast amounts of #CO2, with cement alone causing 8% of global #emissions. #EmbodiedCarbon #ClimateEmergency https://t.co/kytVMAt41k
— Richard Ashwell 🌍 💙 (@RichardLAshwell) September 24, 2021
The report, steered by the Royal Academy of Engineering, said a new way of thinking is needed before planning new homes, factories, roads and bridges.Prof Rebecca Lunn from Strathclyde University, one of the report's authors, said: "Our biggest failure is that we build buildings, then we knock them down and throw them away. We must stop doing this."Fellow author, Mike Cook, adjunct professor at Imperial College, challenged the government's £27bn road-building programme because of the embodied emissions created to obtain the concrete and tarmac, as well as the use of very polluting machines to construct the highways.Prof Cook told BBC News: "We have to radically revise the way we look at things."Prof Cook said questions should be asked whether projects such as HS2 - with its massive embodied carbon - will really benefit future generations.
