Concrete
topic on 3 shows · 10 statements across 6 episodes
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 
Catalyst 
How I Built This
10 statements about Concrete, every show
Leah Ellis: Labor represents 80% of concrete's total installed cost
“The total installed cost of concrete is, is 80% labor, and so even if there's a premium on the cement part, once you roll that into concrete, and then concrete's a very small part of the building, and then, you know, but it is a big part of the carbon footprin…”
Friedmann: CO2-to-concrete is an exothermic, gigaton-scale market
“So turning CO two into concrete is a gigaton market, and it's not nuts. It actually releases energy.”
Friedmann: Hundreds of companies convert CO2 into building materials
“Now there's hundreds of companies that turn CO₂ into those kinds of products.”
Ballard: Concrete homes produce less lifecycle carbon than traditional stick-built homes
“When you sort of did the whole accounting, sort of the life cycle accounting, there was a good argument to be made then and now that a house made of like more resilient, energy efficient materials on a life cycle actually would produce less carbon than one tha…”
Ballard: Replacing concrete with steel or plastic increases global carbon emissions
“If you replace concrete with anything, that number goes up. If you try to replace it with plastic, if you try to replace it with steel, think about where you use concrete.”
Finke: Cement accounts for about 90% of concrete's carbon emissions
“And just to clarify the cement and concrete, concrete is the building material, and cement is the binder, the glue. And about 90% of the emissions come from cement.”
Kann: Global per capita concrete consumption tripled in 40 years
“We actually use three times as much per capita today as we did 40 years ago.”
Ellis: Cement is the most produced man-made material globally
“Well, concrete is about 90% rocks and 10% cement, but even so, cement is the most massively produced man-made material in the world, and second most consumed material besides water.”
Ellis: Contractor labor makes up 90% of installed concrete costs
“What's interesting is that 90% of the cost, the total installed cost of concrete, is actually labor from the contractor.”
Wood is significantly more sustainable than concrete for construction
“Wood is a very sustainable material, way more sustainable than concrete or other materials, so we should Continue having tree plantations and harvesting for wood generation, and I think that doing improved forest management on, on timber areas is, is an import…”