Processing

Material processing is the stage of production that an extracted material needs to go through until it can be used in final fabrication stage; this signifier is present when the cost – economic and ecological – associated with this stage is minimized. A recent report concludes that although “provided the stone is locally or domestically sourced, the carbon emissions associated with it are less than other building materials”, ”the largest component of each stone footprint is attributable to the processing stage of the life cycle, mostly due to the different stages of processing (i.e. primary processing, secondary processing, finishing)” (Crishna et al., 2010, p. 17). The processing industry of steel and cement perform worst in the carbon footprint index and are projected to remain high until 2050 (Van Ruijven et al., 2016), providing a very strong reason for the need to reduce the usage of these materials in construction.