The Concrete Orchard

Although we live in a concrete jungle, we often find ourselves wishing we were walking among century-old olive trees, enjoy the warm embrace of nature, or wandering through sugar cane in a warm Carribean breeze..

Today a compromise is being achieved by the engineers of Valencia’s ICITECH-UPV and Brazil’s UNESP, Universidad Estadual Paulista UNESP (São Paulo, Brazil) as they develop a new kind of concrete made out of rubble, and olives!

Yes, you heard it right, olives.

Nobody expects you to pour it on your bread but the new concrete is not only cheaper to make but also obviously more ecological.

The concrete also makes use of ashes from sugar cane and the results were recently published in the prestigious professional journal Construction and Building Materials.

The sugar waste was a direct result of the Brazilian connection, where 650 million tons are harvested every year but about 15% of the product is waste material.

Olives of course are much more home grown, and as everyone with any sense knows, you don’t eat the stone, which is the basis of the concrete being developed from waste produced from olive stone ashes provided by the Almazara Candela company from Elche (Alicante).

Who knows where this group of researchers will turn their attention next; perhaps pretty soon our skyscrapers will emit a faint odour of peach, and our bridges persimmon.