Impact 1. Rehoming Unwanted Materials
The world’s waste problem continues to grow. Landfills and recycling centers are so unequipped to handle global waste production that billions of dollars are spent every year just to ship waste to where people don’t have to see it. Even in waste-conscious circles, the mantra of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ often does very little to reuse waste, but that waste costs municipalities billions of dollars to dispose of this waste even though it can be used as raw materials for building.
GloGreen Global R&D will work extensively to find, test, and certify solutions and building materials that are made all or in part with local recycled waste. There are plots of lands in every port of the world filled with shipping containers left to corrode because they are deemed unusable for global logistics. These containers are strong, durable, and still can be used instead of taking up landfill space. With a little adaptation, the steel of discarded containers can be refurbished into ultra-strong framing for any building for generations to come.
Another real-world example of GloGreen rehoming unwanted materials is an insulative product called Papercrete. Our insulation is made of concrete combined with 70% locally sourced recycled paper. These blocks are fire-resistant, with very high sound and thermal resistance, and have already seen extensive, and successful use in some of our recent construction projects.
We are actually working on adding 20% of non-recyclable plastics into the papercrete. After the testings and certifications, that new formula will be implemented in every factory worldwide.
Impact 2. Real Passive Energy
Today the prevailing sources of renewable energy are solar and wind. While they may be renewable, however, they are not passive energy sources. The equipment required to harness those energy sources are expensive to produce, expensive to maintain, and have a fixed lifespan. Amortizing these costs over a multiple-year or multiple-decade timespan shows a dollar-per-watt ratio that is not nearly as palatable as initially seems. One major flaw in plans for powering homes revolves around the idea that all energy must be generated. However, plenty of free, passive, and most of all untapped energy sources exist around modern buildings.
Examples include, recovering the difference in energy between the air outside and inside the house, or using “micro-geothermal” solutions, creating “mini-vortexes'' inside buildings. Too many inventors are experimenting with and creating everyday solutions to use passive energy, but finding themselves without funding to pursue their passions to completion.
GloGreen Global R&D will seek out these solutions for certification and implementation in our factories world-wide by not only bringing advanced technology to the construction market, but providing revenue and incentive for inventors everywhere.
Impact 3. Nature-Proof
People are displaced from their homes for a multitude of reasons. While governments and societies can control socioeconomic factors that contribute to displacement, natural disasters cannot be stopped through politics or diplomacy.
During catastrophic events, people seek shelter in publicly designated areas because the construction of these buildings are built to a standard that considers extreme weather conditions. Every person should be able to take shelter in his own home, with the same type of standards. Homes are not typically built to such lofty standards because the cost is too prohibitive. However, GloGreen has designed construction techniques that make all buildings fireproof, flood-proof, earthquake-proof, bulletproof, tornado-proofand, to some extent, idiot-proof.
This is all possible at a fraction of the cost of traditional building methods. These techniques will be implemented based on their needs, usually depending on the territory where the buildings are constructed. While the savings in human stress and suffering are more than enough reasons to pursue nature-proofing, the economic value cannot be overstated.
Impact 4. Building for Longevity
Society has been plagued by the concept of planned obsolescence for millennia, and only now, with its more global impact, mankind is beginning to awaken to the consequences of buildings and infrastructures on the environment. In the quest for higher profits, companies found easy money to be made in products that just lasted long enough for the next release.
Two-year old iPhones clog landfills, cars just outside their warranty periods languish in junkyards, and robber-baron construction companies come back to their buildings a generation later to knock them down and put them right back up again, all for the sake of easy coin.
We can do better. GloGreen’s techniques can produce buildings that will last for generations, freeing up construction to focus on making things better instead of rebuilding the bad. Just imagine how great it would be to rebuild buildings on a multiple-century timeline as opposed to a multiple-decade timeline.
Impact 5. Streamlined Logistic
Globalization has brought forth many advances in trade and helped build and shape economies, but shipping carbon emissions are a very real cost of this progress, and while no expense sheet in the world tracks it, everyone will one day have to pay for it. We are already living with the consequences. It’s time to turn an eye toward reducing that cost, and one low-hanging fruit involves local supply lines.
GloGreen created materials and technologies that can be made with local sources. GloGreen sources locally whenever possible, not just to keep wealth inside the region where real estate is built, but to cut down on transportation waste and emissions. That is possible, because GloGreen Global can act as a hub negotiating extreme wholesale prices, knowing the needs of each factory in a region.