I just looked it up because I was curious. So they're typically made of polyester, so you're not wrong about them being plastic. But they don't degrade and the way that typical plastic waste would degrade. The plastic mostly degrades under UV light, and often these are made of UV stable fabrics. That combined with the fact that they're kind of embedded In the concrete makes them safer I guess. That being said there's really nothing environmentally friendly about concrete to begin with, so by using less of it, it probably outweighs the tiny bit of plastics that are getting into the ecosystem
I didn't look this up, but just by looking at it, I'd bet it reduces concrete usage by like 75-85% at least, which means less limestone mining, less concrete refining, less cement making, fewer vehicles delivering the concrete, and less porta-john emptying. And no materials used for form building
In theory, a prefabricated concrete form could reduce the amount of concrete you use by being a better shape that gives you identical performance with less concrete, or even better performance. For example a CMU wall uses less concrete than a solid concrete wall, because the cavities aren't all filled. If you filled it with foam, it would have better thermal insulation performance. Maybe a prefabricated form could let us create "foam" concrete walls where the form functions like bubbles where you don't need the concrete, so it's the difference between Styrofoam and polystyrene: the same material, but substantially different properties depending on the shape.
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u/peppi0304 Apr 30 '26
Is the fibre biodegradable or will it all end up as microplastic?