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Is stone not a bio based renewable?

(Concrete isn't, but plain old stone? Or bricks?)



I think this is sort of a more interesting question than the responses you got made it out to be.

Yes, of course, stone doesn’t really grow back on the timescales that we care about. Yes, stone not “bio” in any sense really.

But the goal of the law is not to make biology or geology points. It is to reduce the embodied carbon of new construction. I guess the determination was made that stone has some carbon cost… maybe it comes from the mining?

Or maybe they are trying to kickstart, specifically, a new industry in the field of growable construction material. Maybe they figure stone mining is already well developed tech anyway.


Cinder blocks. That what you are missing here.

Lots of house in France are made of that. Not “rocks” and that is a co2 intensive process to produce concrete.

See : Lafarge


Stone is just minerals. There's no organic (bio) component in stone at all.

Likewise, there's nothing renewable about stone. Our primary source is digging it out of the ground.


Isn't that just a matter of perspective? Most of the stone where I live is made of limestone which is from dead organisms. To the point that you can just break it open and find fossils throughout it.

That isn't renewable in the timeframe of humanity, but in the age of the universe it's renewable.


Good point, there are bio stones, but they are not renewable by our reference. But the vulcano stones are. And we have really lots of other stone underneath. No shortage of them. I would count them renewable.


If you are counting that as renewable then crude oil could be seen as renewable, too. ;)


Actually no. The situation that allowed that to happen, won't happen again in our biosphere. There are now microbes that break down decaying plant matter very quickly. So you won't ever get substantial amounts of oil being formed in the earth's crust.


Where are we growing new stones?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortar_(masonry)

You can recycle them. And raw stones are not a rare thing and they do get formed new constantly inside the earth.


I also took physical science courses in middle school. Just because new stones are formed within the earth's crust at some marginal rate does not mean that they are considered a renewable resource.


Have you every watched a vulcano spit out lava?

I wouldn't call that marginal. And vulcanoes are just the visible part of that process happening everywhere in the crust.


We're talking about stone in general. Volcanic stone is one type of stone, which does not cover all of the applications of stone as used in buildings, masonry and other industries today. I also specifically addressed volcanic stones in a sister comment.

Some rate of formation is not enough to satisfy the commonly held definition of renewable resources. Google "is stone a renewable resource" for a jumping off point.


Iceland architects trying it out next to volcanoes, funnel the molten stuff into building material mounds of some kind


I think that's pretty neat but lava stone is a very particular type of stone with particular properties, suited for specific applications, where as the typical stone you will see in masonry and building materials is not renewable.


If we run out of stone, we have lots of other problems.


That's a non-sequitur. Stone is not considered a renewable resource, which is typically defined as a resource which naturally replenishes itself over time at a meaningful rate compared to the rate of consumption.


My point is that "renewable resource" is a fairly meaningless term when applied to stone. Sure, we technically have a finite amount of it on the planet, but we also can't possibly use it all up. Not unless we have technology that would allow us to travel outside the solar system, at which point the limited amount of stone is also moot.

Sure, it doesn't fit the definition, but there is also no reason to care that it doesn't.


Do we really consume more stone, than gets relenished? Is that a assumption or well studied topic?


It's my assumption based on the fact that we continually mine new portions of the earth over time. Trees and other life exist within regenerative chemical cycles, whereas rock formation is a physical process that consumes some limited supply of material on Earth. I would love to know more about this as well, if you come across any resources.


... where the mantle meets the crust?




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