Steel Plastic glass?

The answer is concrete.

And while it's an incredibly useful and ubiquitous material producing, it releases a large amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

There is technology available that prevents the gas from being released, but it comes at an additional cost.

At least it first, and only a few dozen out of thousands of American plants use it.

You could wake up in the morning.

You're in contact with it.

You go to bed there and then, as you eat, sleep, play throughout.

Today you're in contact with concrete.

Everything we see here is pretty much concrete.

Exactly.

All the buildings have.

Concrete in the roadway has concrete.

Everything you see.

There's concrete in it somewhere.

But concrete has an admissions problem.

The energy intensive process of making concrete releases massive amounts of CO two into the atmosphere.

Its main ingredient is responsible for 7% of Global co two emissions.

But what if there was a way that instead of releasing carbon dioxide, concrete could trap it forever, ready to suit up?

Thank you.

There's a reason concrete is everywhere at Thomas Concrete in Atlanta.

It's their business.

There is no material that will do the same things as concrete.

You cannot have the same type of strength levels.

You cannot have the same type of their ability.

I mean, it is the second most consumed substance on the planet after water.

Great concrete is a mixture of rocks, sand, water and, most importantly, cement to bind it altogether.

But cement has a huge carbon footprint.

£1 of cement releases £1 of CO two emissions.

It's the second highest industrial source of CO.

Two on the planet, but without cement.

Concrete doesn't hold up skyscrapers.

All right, so this is what's different about your operation here.

This is This is kind of the brains of the beast here.

This silver tank is the newest thing in concrete.

It's called carbon Cure.

This innovative system injects carbon dioxide into the concrete as it's being mixed when the concrete hardens, those otherwise harmful emissions air sequester forever before they ever even reach our atmosphere.

Christie Gamble is part of the team behind carbon cures technology.

We actually convert the CO two into a mineral.

It's a stone.

It's getting trapped in the concrete forever, and the best part about it is that the mineral itself actually improves the compressive strength of the concrete.

That's right, the rial selling point here.

Adding CO two actually makes a concrete stronger.

That means producers like Thomas Concrete can use less cement in their mixtures and still achieve the same strength.

Less cement equals fewer emissions.

Compression tests like this one prove that the concrete made with carbon cure is just as hardy as the traditional stuff.

Ooh, that'll wake you up.

You go to any major city right now.

There's construction happening all over the place.

Exactly.

If we're able to reduce 5% of the carbon footprint of the concrete industry, that's a significant change from where we're at right now.

Ultimately, if this technology was deployed across the globe, we could reduce about 700 mega tons of CO.

Two every year.

And that's the same.

Is taking 150 million cars off the road every year.

It's going to take the concrete industry changing the way they do things.

Carbon Cure says about 90 concrete plants across the U.

S.

And Canada used its technology right now that's a fraction of the estimated 5500 plants in the US alone.

Concrete industry is very slow to take on new change and innovation, and it's understandable because they work in an industry where quality is everything.

The implications of sending concrete to site that's not up to quality could be catastrophic.

Ultimately, it all comes down to the bottom line.

Companies pay to use carbon cures signature system and have to buy CO two from a factory where it's admitted, but they save money by using less of their most expensive ingredients cement.