Tuesday, March 10, 2009

A Greener Concrete

Our goal for our table business is to produce a greener product. What is truly green ? What is totally green? It's a challenge for any business but it's necessary and urgent especially when climate change is inevitable particularly if we don't change our habits and attitude toward the possibilities.

One of the materials we use in our tables extensively is concrete. Concrete you say, how's that close to being green? Well the best way for us to produce concrete in a greener way is to eliminate a certain percentage of cement in our products and in particular in our actual concrete mix.

One way we've managed to reduce the carbon footprint of our concrete products is through the addition of a material called pozzolan. The first pozzolans were used by the Romans to make cement from burned limestone and Santorum earth from volcanic eruptions. These ancient concrete mixes were extremely durable and many architectural elements still survive today.

Today Pozzolan is a "green" construction material made from industrial by-products that help contribute to the sustainability of cement and concrete. Pozzolans use in concrete replaces an equal amount of cement resulting in energy conservation and emission reduction from cement manufacturing.

To sum things up, our concrete products are 50% greener than if we were just using a standard concrete mix and we are constantly striving to improve those percentages and create greener, sound, durable, and aesthetic products for our customers.

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