Eco-friendly Cement, – Piles of food waste can cause serious environmental problems. If not treated promptly, decomposing food waste can produce methane gas and can damage the ozone layer. To overcome this problem, two researchers from the University of Tokyo, Sakai Yuya, and Machida Kota, took the initiative to reprocess food waste into environmentally friendly cement.
Sakai and Machida created the world’s first cement made entirely from food waste. To make the cement, they use leftover food such as vegetable pieces, leftover tea leaves, coffee grounds, and orange peels. It takes several stages of the process such as drying, crushing, and compression to “turn” food waste into suitable construction cement
“The process of making environmentally friendly cement requires months of trial and error until the results are really appropriate. Each type of food waste requires a different temperature and processing method and this is quite a challenge for us,” said Sakai in Japan Today.
Sakai explained that the most ideal food waste to be reprocessed into cement are tea leaves, orange peel and onions, coffee grounds, and chicory. These materials will produce cement that is strong, elastic, and more sturdy almost four times that of ordinary concrete cement.
Despite its high durability and strength, Sakai and Machida’s eco-friendly cement is susceptible to being eaten by rats and other pests. That’s because they only use 100 percent food waste to make the cement, without any other additives. Therefore, they also equip their cement with a special varnish that prevents it from being eaten by pests.
Edible Eco-Friendly Cement
Machida stated that the cement he created with Sakai was biodegradable. Once decomposed, this cement can turn into compost and can fertilize the surrounding soil.”
We hope that Eco-friendly Cement can replace plastics and ordinary cement products which have proven to be bad for the environment,” said Machida.
Besides being biodegradable, the environmentally friendly cement that Machida and Sakai created is also edible. In an emergency, this cement can serve as a backup food.”
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The environmentally friendly cement that we create has a unique and different taste, color, and aroma. To consume this Eco-friendly Cement, we need to boil it first,” said Sakai.
For information, food waste is one of the biggest sources of environmental problems in Japan. The country of Sakura generated about 5.7 million tons of food waste in 2019 and the government aims to reduce it by around 2.7 million tons by 2030.