Is is already available on the internet? Could you post a link?

David

Written as her Biz/Economics Masters thesis my Samantha Manniex, daughter of Roofkrete's inventor John M, who sadly died recently. New management is getting serious about pushing Roofkrete (and poss its derivative ASMET). I contributed to her primary-research survey of 'Architects and users'. I've just written to her:

"Cement may be an ‘eco-bad’ material, but Roofkrete uses it in so effectively in small quantities, due to ultra-high-quality cement/aggregate mix and fine-mesh reinforcement. That makes it a prime example for the ideal of using v small amounts of hi-tech and/or high-env-impact materials/resources, for what they offer within in a hi-tech way that achieves exceptional performance, the end result being lo-impact (invoke Buckminster Fuller). In that case, poss less need to go looking for lower-impact cement sources, or cement substitutes. Could go even higher-tech/higher quality/thinner e.g. with carbon fibre reinforcement.

You gave little weight to this, other than
“RoofKrete membranes are only 5mm thick on average, which reduces the amount of product required for each building application. Commonly used cement based construction products are usually much thicker than RoofKrete.”
Much thicker’ is an understatement!

Beware of so-called lo-impact/carbon-neutral cement producers. There’s no escaping that OPC needs irreducible x amount of energy to produce from its raw materials. In that x is supplied by non-carbon means, it’s still huge amounts of precious energy that’s taken away from other uses. Where those non-carbon means involves burning municipal or other organic ‘waste’ instead of fossil fuel, then that’s v suspect. There’s a strong case in favour of landfill rather than burning, of stockpiling waste materials that we’re not presently set up to sort and recycle, rather than vapourising it forever. Burning of municipal waste for energy seemed a good idea for a while, but will in future attract much hindsight-criticism. Many councils are already now instead installing sophisticated sorting systems deriving from Australian mining technology, to usefully recycle rather than crassly burn their waste mountains. In future, old landfills will be quarried for their precious, concentrated resource stockpiles, as commodities of all sorts become scarce, expensive, and subject to political blackmail e.g. China’s getting organised to starve the west of vital rare elements essential for electronic components.

You say
"Do not use man-made materials that take a long time to decompose. Many manmade materials, that have never been a part of the natural lifecycle, are very difficult for Nature to break down. For example, plastics can take many years to decompose."
But that’s exactly why they’re so worthwhile stockpiling in landfill – the oil-as-feedstock hydrocarbons remain in usefully long-chain/complex form rather than degenerating exothermically low-grade form.

Great effort – well done. Can it be made public on Green Building forum etc?"

I only have it as emailed to me - yes - we need a link to it online.

Roy Jenkins is the MD. The report is unashamedly from the Roofkrete perspective. None of that detracts from its validity.

Apart from the Roofkrete angle, this is a serious crit of the BRE Green Guide.

Posted By: fostertomsubject to political blackmail e.g. China’s getting organised to starve the west of vital rare elements essential for electronic components.

I think that's rather unfair to China. It has some natural resources, and it wants to keep the value added by processing those resources rather than allowing some other country to process them and take the profits. That strikes me as commercial good sense from their point of view, not political let alone blackmail. It's inconvenient for us, but that's life.

Posted By: djhunfair to China. It has some natural resources, and it wants to keep the value added ...

As I understand it, China's policy of cosying up to African and other 3rd world mineral-rich countries that have been long-time asset-stripped by the west, is not only to bring some justice to the 3rd world (which China is currently departing) but very much in order to put a stranglehold on western electronics-based supremacy.

That is a tactic that China will succeed in, if only because of the justice backed by power that lies behind it - western traditional bully-tactics will lose it friends and influence now that there's an alternative.

The argument in favour of energy conservation/ sustainable energy that is currently holding some sway in western power circles, is nothing to do with climate change - it's the one about the west becoming independent of 'foreign' sources of oil/energy. The same logic will rapidly spread to a wide range of other 'foreign' resources that the west is accustomed to getting cheap largely from arm-locked 3rd world nations.

The conclusion can only be that the west must learn to recover/recycle every scrap of such substance-assets, as well as its energy-assets. That will be a big technological challenge, without which all other western technological efforts will grind to a halt.

Such recovery/recycling will itself require large energy input - basic chemistry, driving exothermically-degraded chemical compounds 'back uphill'. That energy can only come from the one source that's available in abundance - the sun. And only the planet itself and its plants, not we animals, have the capacity to capture that much solar energy.

It will be a shocking process to the west, which may just enforce some growth of humility, if not actual intelligence.

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: evan</cite>Storing it in Google Docs or uploading it to RapidShare or similar will work.</blockquote>

Thanks for the advice, I have just uploaded it to Google Documents.
The link is https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1SVEgMhb8DCk3iKYiYgJQWVqBhv-b0dRKnffREI1Qu8g&hl=en

one of the amazing results of this thesis is that the Green Guide to Specification -has Single Ply PVC Roofing as being the Most Sustainable waterproofing membrane--it is rated A+ for almost everything--see below

summary rating A+
climate change A+
water extraction A+
mineral resource A+
human toxicity A+
waste disposal A+
fossil fuel depletion A+
acidification a+
and more A+ for everything ?

author "Thornton " states that "PVC IS THE ANTITHESIS OF A GREEN BUILDING MATERIAL "

question for everyone--why does PVC get the highest A+ green guide rating ? ? ?

CAN ANYONE IN THE GREEN BUILDING FORUM EXPLAIN THIS ?