Sugarcrete's material benefits, sweet R&D
carbon emissions — originating from design, production and deployment of cement, steel and aluminium — have lagged. UNEP pinpoints three strategies to decarbonise building materials: one, avoid unnecessary extraction and production; two, shift to regenerative materials; and three, improve decarbonisation of conventional materials.
Sugarcrete is one such regenerative material.
Developed by researchers at University of East London (UEL), Sugarcrete blocks have been created by combining bagasse — the dry, pulpy, fibrous material that remains after crushing sugarcane — with sand-mineral binders. Sugarcrete is 4-5 times lighter than concrete blocks, uses 15-20% of concrete's carbon footprint and substantially reduces costs.
According to the researchers, the material's main innovation is to challenge the misconception that biomaterials have low structural performance. They claim it would be possible to completely replace the brick industry using a fraction of 30% of global bagasse production.
This would save 1.08 billion tonnes of CO2, or 3% of global CO2 production.
In a climate-hit world, there should be larger investments in R&D of products like Sugarcrete, so that they can hit the market quickly and running. In India, crop residue-burning is a severe and recurring problem.
