3.2 Material Use Trends
3.2 Material
Use
Trends
As world population
and
associated
consumption
have
grown,
the
use
of
natural
resources
to
produce
materials
has
increased
exponentially. Steel and
cement,
used
primarily
for
the
construction
industry
are
two
of
the
most
utilised
materials
in
the
world
as
demonstrated
by
the
pie
charts
above. Both are
an
integral
ingredient
of
the
construction
industry
in
rapidly
expanding
developing
countries,
and
both
use
a
large
amount
of
energy
to
produce
them.
Figure 3.2.1
World
production
of
steel
and
cement
(millions
of
tonnes)
since
1930
Figure 3.2.1 sourced from MIT
opencourseware under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/NR/rdonlyres/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/7304E211-2A38-4420-90C5-9669E185203F/0/lec1_introduction_jao.pdf
Figure 3.2.2: Projections for global steel and cement production
(Source for both charts MIT
opencourseware)[see reference 3])
Figure 3.2.1 sourced from MIT
opencourseware under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/NR/rdonlyres/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/7304E211-2A38-4420-90C5-9669E185203F/0/lec1_introduction_jao.pdf
As shown by
figure
3.2.2,
the
production
of
steel
and
cement
are
set
to
increase
too,
with
global
cement
production
set
to
double
in
about
25
years. The production of
most
materials
follow
a
similar
growth
pattern,
with
increase
in
usage
set
to
continue
as
resources
allow.