Both Oars In The Hubris of Cement

Feb 19, 2010

I loathed cement long before the earthquake toppled Port au Prince’s buildings and sent them spilling into the streets on January 12th.  The tumbled piles of concrete and steel have only served to heighten my disdain for the gray powder.  The failure of so many structures to withstand the quake has replaced my once forced respect with open contempt.  With a thousand piles of rubble lying about, there is simply even less to like about cement than before.

To be intellectually honest, I must point out that buildings made of concrete and rebar, when properly designed and constructed, can withstand earthquakes better than many other types of construction. Time will probably show that human error in design, such as the use of heavy poured roofs, undersized columns and lack of sufficient shear walls, as well as cost cutting measures based in poverty and greed, like reducing the quality & quantity of cement & rebar used, are more the culprits in the disaster than concrete’s natural durability.  Still, the substance itself is just downright displeasing.

I have worked with cement for over a decade in Haiti. Cement was a necessary evil in the building of our new campus.  With limited space, we had to go up. Massive concrete structures were the only option. For a decade, I had cement in my nose and on my hands and feet for hours at a time. I have felt it slowly and subtly burn the top layer of my skin as it turned the lower layers below dry as a desert. It was in the middle of building our second three-story building that my gut cringed. True, we needed a larger school—but it wasn’t pretty to watch it happen.

From that point on, I pushed us to spill less cement. I preached daily on the evils of wasting a substance that cost nearly as much per bag as a boss mason’s daily wage. I attempted to inspire the bosses into more efficient use by pointing out that we could double their pay if they could save a bag a day. I tried all sorts of angles to appease my mounting guilt. In the end, I just ended up hating cement and the diesel spewing trucks that delivered it. I vowed that any new school I built would be mostly out of wood.

Fortunately, due in part to our location and to the quality of our newer buildings, our campus experienced very little damage in the quake. So, thanks God, no new construction is necessary. But, the environmental impact of ten years of building has already been done.  Some reports suggest that nearly an equal amount of CO2 is released into the atmosphere to the quantity of cement produced. On top of this, the once fertile ground we have covered with tons of concrete will never be free or produce food again.  Matter being matter and concrete being a form of it that does not change easily, what is here will be here, or somewhere, forever.

Unsurprisingly, China, India and the United States are the biggest users and producers of cement. While China and India have the advantage of being nearly self-sufficient in the substance, the US is an increasing importer. Therefore, cement, like oil before it, has the potential to become an economic problem even for the US. [The fact that Mexico and Brazil are in the top twenty producers of cement is yet another reason for us to work for a more cohesive hemisphere.]

The economic weight of importing cement is already laying heavily on Haiti. The country, once an exporter of the stuff, is now perilously far from being self-sufficient. Cement and steel, along with the import of diesel, make up the three strands in the rope that continues to tighten around Haiti’s neck.  Rebuilding with cement and rebar, especially in the case of single family housing, would be a mistake on many levels for Haiti.

Having seen its forests reduced to nearly nothing, Haiti seems to have no alternative. But, what if we invested part of the generous relief headed to Haiti in planting trees with the vision of using more wood in the future?  Couldn’t we cleanse ourselves of past sins and avoid future ones? Couldn’t we improve the economy, the environment and the aesthetics of the country at the same time?

At the very least, the looming environmental and financial cost, cement’s inherent ugliness, and the impossible piles of rubble left behind by the quake should give us pause before we add new cement dust to the old still swirling in the streets.  If we do not take this moment to think differently about cement locally and globally, we will proved to have learned nothing from our hubris.