Waching daily Sep 28 2017

hey come on walk with me I've got something to share with you if I told you that the

natural resource that we use the most in the world is water you probably wouldn't

be too surprised but if you knew that the second most used resource is

aggregate which is sand gravel and crushed rock I bet you would be

surprised but it's true sand gravel and rock are incredibly important for our

economy and the activities that we produce industry all over the world now

in Canada where I live the demand for aggregate is actually one

big gravel truckload per year for every man woman and child the per capita

consumption one full gravel truckload per year imagine that now it's that's

just for paving roads building sidewalks basements for our new homes it's pretty

high now of course the consumption rates depend a lot on climate but looking at

the United States a recent report that was done by the US Geologic Survey

estimated that the average new home in the United States requires 100 tons of

aggregate like the stuff behind me that's coming from this gravel pit

100 tons to build that's 4 big gravel trucks just to produce a new home and if

you include the road that's in front of that house well it doubles and so let's

just keep going with the math on that taking new housing start information

from 2016 in the United States was about seven hundred and eighty two thousand

new homes were built and he'd and you add that all up the amount of gravel

needed just to produce those brand new homes in 2016 just in one year would

cover a city the size of Tampa Florida or Fresno California

or if you're in Canada Mississauga Ontario and it would cover it

one foot thick with aggregate Wow I was pretty surprised when I found that

out now that's just houses that doesn't include schools skyscrapers sidewalks

all the roads we build in fact in China the plan between now and 2030 is to

build I think it's a hundred and sixty-five thousand miles of new roads

in China so imagine the amount of aggregate they're going to need so the

reality is is that we don't often think about you know the land use that's

associated with cement and asphalt as being a major footprint like in order to

supply it but it really is it's the second second-largest in British

Columbia actually surface mines like this gravel pit will be larger than any

surface mines for metal or for coal by 2060 because the population growth is

increasing the amount of demand and our need for more of this stuff so it's not

just the footprint either though that's an issue with this it's very interesting

as we drive our economy but we're trying to also lower our greenhouse gas

emissions there's a report done I think it's in 2012 by the California Geologic

Survey yeah that's right and they tallied up the amount of greenhouse gas

emissions associated with the diesel burnt by the gravel trucks just moving

gravel from a pit like this to where it's going to be used so just the diesel

to transport that gravel and that adds up to 0.3 percent of the total

greenhouse gas emissions in the state that doesn't include what happens when

the gravel gets to where it needs to be and what happens with it it doesn't

include the GHG's that are produced as we're mining it or for all of

the equipment that we have to produce like the trucks and and the conveyors

and all of that stuff so it's really in our best interest if we can minimize the

amount of aggregate that we aggregate footprint that we really need and

business-as-usual into the future probably isn't going to cut it so

there's two things that come to mind there's a lot of things we can do but

two things I wanted to share with you today that we can do first of all we can

recycle recycling is not anything new we're pretty used to that we have this

amazing statistic that I think in the United States was 587 Oh what was it now

well here's how it works out 20 at 25 percent between 25 and 30 percent of the

total demand for aggregate could be met by recycling stuff that we're

demolishing so when we're digging up old roads like you can see behind me here

there's a big pile of ashphalt over there that's been dug up it's going to

be recycled that kind of stuff or if we're leveling a building and we pull

away the concrete and we don't put it in a landfill but we recycle it and we can

reduce our overall footprint demand for aggregate from gravel pits like this one

by a third that's huge I mean if you if you multiply that over the world that's

a lot of a lot of footprint the second thing that we can do that's pretty easy

and we're doing it a lot I'm just going to switch you around here to the other

side of me is we can use gravel pit land twice so rather than just having gravel

pits and then leaving them which often actually they don't seem to get

reclaimed a lot well you could do a better job of converting them into

things we need so for example here's a good use I've got a gravel pit on one

side this used to be a gravel pit now to ball diamond

right or there's tennis courts over there we also see a lot of golf courses

being prepared on old aggregate pits or even entire subdivisions built on

that land so we're getting a 2-for-1 on the amount of land that we need our

footprint to still enjoy our high quality of life but to reduce our

consumptive requirements on the earth I mean if you think about it one gravel truckload

per year for everybody especially as we have new emerging economies in Asia can

you imagine the amount of footprint that takes and the amount of greenhouse gas

emissions it's going to take to produce it another big one is sand is used for

glass and how many things can you think of that we use glass floor I mean it's

everywhere and in fact in Africa even there's some Wars being fought over it

because not all sand is the same and different you need different qualities

and different kinds of grains and and all of that to produce different

products and it's actually becoming a rare commodity it's hard to imagine that

but it's actually becoming rare so anyways thanks for walking with me today

you can check out more of my information on www.barryjwilson.com I've got a free

searchable blog with many many topics on this and and other land use issues also

invite you to listen to the Virtual Time Machine Podcast we broadcast on iTunes

SoundCloud or whatever your favorite podcast app is you can get it through

RSS leave me a note here and tell me what you think of this is it did you

know all this or were you a little surprised?? I was pretty surprised when I

found this out thanks a lot I hope you're having an

awesome day