Medium: Newspaper

Vehicle: New York Times

Reporter: Amos Zeeberg

Date: January 28, 2020

Headline: Bricks Alive! Scientists Create Living Concrete

Company Involved: University of Colorado Boulder

Story

A team of researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder has created a new sustainable building material that uses cyanobacteria to form “living concrete” which both reproduces and absorbs carbon dioxide through photosynthesis (unlike traditional concrete which generates high amounts of greenhouse gas). The living concrete is strongest when stored in a dry environment at room temperature because the bacteria begin to die out. However, it can come back to life when exposed to high temperatures and humidity, making it an extremely renewable material. To make the living cement, cyanobacteria is placed into a mixture of warm water, sand, and nutrients. Microbes then absorb light and produce calcium carbonate, which cements the sand particles together. When the team eventually added gelatin to the mixture, they were able to pour it into molds and produce two-inch cubes and shoe-box sized blocks that showed potential for construction. To make more concrete, scientists simply cut a piece of the block they created, place it in a warm beaker with more raw materials, pour a mold and voila – more living concrete!

The University of Colorado Boulder team is working to make the current material stronger and more easily assembled as well as developing a type that doesn’t require the addition of gelatin. The project is being funded by the Defense Department’s speculative research branch, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), who is interested in using the living building materials to aid construction in remote environments without having to transport as many materials. The project team leader, Dr. Wil Srubar, sees a future in which building materials will detect and respond to dangerous conditions. He even says this type of biology would be ideal for building on other planets, like Mars.

My Thoughts

The message of this article was very positive and inspirational, definitely generating positive PR for the University of Colorado Boulder. Too often, the news is dominated by the tragic effects of climate change, but this story provides hope that the next generation of scientists will create real solutions to the problems that humans have caused on this planet.

However, the article doesn’t clearly make the argument that this new material could have a positive effect on climate change. The sustainability of this material compared to traditional concrete is a huge selling point that could go unnoticed because of the way this story was framed. In my opinion, the article focused too much on the process of making it, instead of the potential uses of living concrete.

Someone with a background in environmental studies would read about this new material and think about all the good things that could be done with it: How it could be used to create sustainable housing for the homeless, how it could improve infrastructure in poor countries around the world, and how we could slowly replace carbon-emitting concrete with a version that removes CO2 from the air. But overall, the sustainability aspect of the story was too subtle to really catch the average person’s attention.

I think public perceptions of this article would be a little skeptical that living concrete will ever gain traction in the construction industry. Implementing new sustainable processes and techniques is commonly viewed as an unnecessary added expense to a company. The fact that this project is funded by DARPA also raises some red flags because I don’t see how the creation of sustainable building materials would benefit the military. If I did PR for the University of Colorado Boulder, I would have explained how easily this new technology could be implemented in various industries. I would make an effort to encourage construction companies to switch to these new sustainable building materials instead of simply informing the public that they might soon exist.

I believe that this article was specifically written to generate PR for the University of Colorado, which is why it focused so much on the team’s process. Every university wants to show how student work ties into the real-world, especially if the project could change an entire industry and fight climate change. I could tell that this story was a result of a news release because the story ended by explaining how researchers are still trying to improve it. If the story ended with the implementation of the material, I would have believed it to be a media-driven story.

Finally, the biggest thing I would have changed about this story if I were the Public Relations person for the University of Colorado Boulder, is providing readers with a way to follow the story. After reading the article, I was left wondering when the material would be ready for industrial use, whether it would be available to the public or solely utilized by the military, and how it could be implemented in the current infrastructure in the U.S.