Category Archives: Materials

MAGIC Materials: Cork Flooring

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cork-tree-with-worker

What a cork tree looks like

I was just looking into various flooring options, and Cork Flooring seemed to me to be the best (even over something like Bamboo flooring).  The following article discusses the pros (of which there are many) and the cons (really just long-distance shipping): Cork Flooring.  To give a brief summary, cork flooring is much more sustainable than traditional hardwood flooring in that “the material is acquired by stripping most of the outer bark from the cork oak tree. This regular harvesting does the tree no harm, and the bark grows back, to be stripped again every nine years.”  This is in contrast to the 60+ years required for similar traditional wood floorings.

Some interesting properties of this very practical surface:

  • Soft like suede, insulating qualities and resiliency of carpet, the easy-to-clean surface of wood or tile
  • Scraps are collected for reuse, so almost nothing is wasted
  • The material is waterproof, and the natural waxy substance inherent in cork, called suberin, makes it mold and mildew resistant
  • If someone in your family suffers from allergies, a cork floor could provide a soft and warm alternative to allergen collecting carpets
  • Cork is naturally flame-resistant
  • Acoustically insulating properties keep foot traffic quiet.
  • Costs as low as $2/sq. ft. (which is cheap, though like woods they do have expensive options)
  • Can be used in just about any room

All of the aforementioned benefits would seem useful for MAGIC, and the fact they come from Europe, which is really the only negative here, won’t matter if their house is being built over there anyways!  I think we should look into this material.

Sequestering Carbon in Cement

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Moss Landing, where Calera makes cement from smokestack gas

Last week’s post on Permable Pavement reminded me of another sustainable paving material: cement made from carbon dioxide and seawater. This technology has been pioneered by a Northern California company called Calera, situated near the Moss Landing gas-fired power plant. Their process involves capturing the “stack gas” created by the power plant, running it through fresh seawater, and adding the resulting calcium carbonate to a concrete mix for commercial use. Calera claims that they can use up to 90% of Moss Landing’s carbon dioxide emissions for such processes, but it has not yet been fully approved by the construction industry or relevant building authorities, which are generally slow to accept changes.

More research needs to be done on the impacts of seawater intake/outtake and cost-effectiveness of this technique, but it offers a benefit that few other building materials do: it actually sequesters carbon dioxide, not by storing it in leaky underground reservoirs like other CCS techniques suggest, but by creating useful and necessary new materials from it. In all likelihood, CCS-cement won’t be available in time for the Green Dorm, but it’s an interesting technology to be aware of as we move forward, looking for both  sustainable materials and emissions-reduction strategies.

Cement from CO2, Scientific American

Climate Action by Calera, Treehugger