Sustainable Cement
(posted 9-1-01)

The jury's out on the environmental credentials of the cement industry. To environmental groups, cement kilns have long been reviled as a crude (and cheap) method of disposing of industry's toxic wastes.

To others, one of the basic building blocks of modern society, cement, has been at the forefront of developing more sustainable energy sources from materials that would otherwise be landfilled or incinerated without recovering energy.

In the UK, Blue Circle has been in PR overdrive following regulatory approval of its joint venture with Michelin to burn waste tyres in Staffordshire.

Tyres join a rich list of waste fuels, which we are reliably informed by a combustion engineer friend, are currently being burned in kilns around Europe including; grape pips, olive pips, rice husks, wood chip, plastics, paint solvent and carpet fluff.