HOW SUSTAINABLE IS CONCRETE

The study used a computer program ATHENA, designed to use to determine sustainable housing for civil engineering students, to determine whether concrete is a sustainable housing material. Sustainability is understood to mean having no net negative impact on the environment. The analysis used compared the environmental impact of producing steel and concrete. The comparison was achieved by designing a simple reinforced concrete beam and a steel I-beam with the same moment capacity, and the environmental impact of producing these two beams was estimated using a commercial computer program designed for the purpose. The results indicated that the concrete beam required much less energy and had a substantially lower net environmental impact than the steel beam.