PCA and MIT work towards Climate Action Plan

The US cement industry is playing its part in reacting to President Obama's Climate Action Plan which states several areas where cement and concrete could help to reduce greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions. One such area is infrastructure.

Read more about it in World Cement.

Sustainable: The business of recycling concrete crunches on

Of all the materials processed by recyclers for reuse in new products, one of the most expensive is concrete. . . . But with more regulations restricting what can go in landfills, and disposal costs continuing to rise, it still makes economic sense to find ways to reuse concrete.

Read more in Finance & Commerce.

When A Parking Lot Is So Much More

NO ONE loves a parking lot. . . . It's hard to imagine an alternative. Or is it? I believe that the modern surface parking lot is ripe for transformation. Few of us spend much time thinking about parking beyond availability and convenience. But parking lots are, in fact, much more than spots to temporarily store cars: they are spaces that have major impacts on the design of our cities and suburbs, on the natural environment and on the rhythms of daily life.

Read more in The New York Times.

Concrete Goes To College

Concrete is one of the oldest materials on the planet, but it has taken thousands of years for it to mature. Scientists have only begun to decode how concrete behaves at the atomic level. Those molecular structures are yielding new clues that could change the way industry builds.

Read more at ENR: Engineering News Record.

MoDOT Pours Smog-Eating Concrete Today

The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) is pouring smog-eating concrete this week for a section of Route 141 in St. Louis this week.

According to Eureka-Wildwood Patch, MoDOT is using a two-lift paving process and one layer will use the new concrete which has a photo-catalytic additive of titanium dioxide. The additive absorbs smog, uses sunlight to break it down, and releases the smog as nitrogen and carbon dioxide.

Read more.

Animal-friendly County Road 21 extension project wins national award

A story in today's edition of Finance & Commerce describes a complicated County Road 21 extension project in Scott County that includes a wildlife underpass. The project just won the 2011 Project Achievement Award from the American Concrete Pipe Association.

The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community insisted on the wildlife bypass for "small critters to cross under the road unimpeded," according to Scott County project manager Greg Felt. Two other partners, Shakopee and Prior Lake, replaced some 3,800 trees as well.

The project used almost every kind of concrete pipe there is including large-diameter reinforced concrete pipe for a sewer bypass, 12-inch to 60-inch installations for culverts and storm water, and precast concrete, four-sided culverts.

U finalizes mining deal for UMore Park property in Rosemount, Empire Township

Nearly 200 million tons of gravel and sand sit under the soil in the western edge of UMore Park. For now.

The University of Minnesota and Dakota Aggregates LLC this week finalized its 40-year agreement for aggregate mining on the university's massive property in Rosemount and Empire Township.

Read more in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Red Wing area could be a hotbed for industrial sand

Near the muddy banks of Hay Creek, a popular trout stream, are significant bluffs covered with a hardwood forest of oak, bass wood and black cherry trees.

Underneath the forested land is an increasingly valuable resource called "frac sand," highly sought after for its size and strength. With perfectly round grains that look like brown sugar crystals, the sand is ideal for the oil and natural gas exploration industry, which uses it to extract fuel from underground rock in a process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Listen to story at Minnesota Public Radio.

Leading UAE construction supplier to reduce CO2 emissions by 93%

Unibeton Ready Mix, the leading United Arab Emerites (UA)supplier of sustainable concrete, is working to create a pioneering product that will reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 93 percent . . . .

Unibeton's current award-winning 'green concrete' product already reduces CO2 emissions by 75 percent and is being used on some major developements through the UAE, including Abu Dhabi's tallest tower, the Landmark Tower, where the largest single pour of 16,000 cubic metres of self-compacting concrete was performed in the GCC.

Learn more at Zawya.com.

Concrete coating made from coal flyash could save billions

Coating concrete destined to rebuild America’s crumbling bridges and roadways with some of the millions of tons of ash left over from burning coal could extend the life of those structures by decades, saving billions of dollars of taxpayer money, scientists reported this week at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society. They described a new coating material for concrete made from flyash that is hundreds of times more durable than existing coatings and costs only half as much.

Read more in R & D Magazine online.

House reintroduces Safe & Efficient Transportation Act

At the urging of The Coalition for Transportation Productivity, the Safe & Efficient Transportation Act has been reintroduced in the House of Representatives by Reps. Mike Michaud (D-Maine) and Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) as H.R. 763.

SETA would, if passed, increase the federal weight limits on Interstate highways. The bill's reintroduction comes as Congress considers the first highway reauthorization package in more than six years.

Read  more at Trucking Info.

Outstanding Creativity at Lakehead University Yields Stronger Concrete

THUNDER BAY – A green cement additive that shows potential to significantly strengthen concrete and also reduce greenhouse gas emissions has been licensed to GreenCentre Canada by Lakehead University. . . .


The technology, developed by Dr. Lionel Catalan (Chemical Engineering) and Dr. Stephen Kinrade (Chemistry), can potentially increase concrete strength by up to 40 percent and reduce the amount of Portland cement needed to make concrete. “This technology is exciting because it has the potential to create a better product for industry while also benefiting the environment,” says Dr. Rui Resendes, Executive Director of GreenCentre Canada.


Read more at Net News Ledger.

Retail store uses new pervious surface for Miller Hill parking lot

One year after re-engineering their parking lot run-off in the Miller Creek watershed, Energy Plus gives the project high marks. Theirs is one of the first projects in the northland to use pervious concrete as part of their drainage solution. Energy Plus owner John Bergstrom says the parking lot drains much faster and more thoroughly with the strip of pervious concrete.

“The water goes away, the rain garden fills up, the plants grow. Things appear to be going swimmingly!” says Bergstrom.

Read more about the project in Miller Mail, a publication of the South St. Louis Soil and Water Conservation District (based in Duluth, Minn.).

MnDOT opts for longer-term fix of Highway 27

The Minnesota Department of Transportation is taking what it calls an innovative approach to an upcoming Highway 27 improvement project in western Minnesota.

A 16.3-mile stretch of the road from Highway 11 to Highway 55 in Grant County will be upgraded with help from a process called “cold-in-place recycling,” which is designed to increase the pavement’s life while taking it easy on the environment.

Read more at Finance & Commerce.

UMore most self-sustaining kind of community

Here's our response to a March 10th Letter to the Editor in the Star Tribune against a mining operation. It was published in its entirety in the March 15 Star Tribune.

"We believe the University of Minnesota is taking prudent action by converting the unused farmland it owns in Rosemount into a gravel pit as part of sustainable community project. Aggregate is as natural to our world as lakes, meadows, trees and more and yet is, understandably, underappreciated; it’s not pretty, there aren’t poems written about it and golly, it’s just too practical a resource. Yet, every person will need 1.55 million pounds of stone, sand and gravel during his or her lifetime.

Aggregates are used in nearly all residential, commercial and industrial building construction and in most public works projects. UMore Park will provide gravel not only for neighborhoods in suburbs but to rebuild crumbling infrastructure in the urban area.

But perhaps the greatest but most misunderstood benefit of UMore Parks’ gravel pit is its convenience. The less trucks have to travel to and from the mine, the less the emissions and impact on the environment.

UMore will be the most self-sustaining kind of community because it will not be dependent upon other communities for its aggregate."

(To read the Letter to the Editor opposing UMore Park, click here: Sustainability is a goal and yet.)