Energy-materials linkage

This looks like an interesting new book, published out of the engineering faculty at Cambridge University: Sustainable Materials - With Both Eyes Open. It is accompanied by a website at www. withbotheyesopen.com. The central premise is the need to rethink how we use materials in order to cut our carbon emissions. As well as switching to renewable energies, the authors set out three key principles concerning how we design the use of materials:

1) make lighter products with less materials in them

2) keep products for longer making more use of the embodied carbon within them

3) use them more intensively.

In addition they suggest the reduction of wastage in production processes and better reuse of components in old products.

So taking the case of steel-frame commercial buildings, they propose lighter-weight designs with less scrap during production, greater reuse of steel, buildings planned for a longer life and more people per sq.m. within the buildings.

In bits, we know all these things but it is interesting to see it all put together.

Yvonne Rydin