A new book coming this spring from the U.S. Green Concrete Council, a for-profit unit of American Concrete Institute, calculates the "green-ness" of the world's most consumed building material.
Produced at a rate of about 25 billion tons per year and growing, concrete requires a tremendous amount of energy to produce, transport, build and maintain, and it contributes to the world's carbon-dioxide emissions. But it also provides benefits. The book weighs and balances the issues to help designers make more efficient use of the material.