Tokyo [Japan] : Japan is a leading country with strong environment protection policy.
The Government promises zero carbon emission by 2050. To achieve this, many companies and sectors are encouraged to step up their effort to use environmentally friendly materials including construction. One of such promising materials is a volcanic rock that is found in abundance in Japan. And the country is volcanically active land. Even its natural symbol, Mount Fuji, is actually a volcano.
This company in Tokyo is promoting the use of volcanic rock to cover surface of building walls, bridges and roadside.
The idea aimed at the beginning to make cosmetic effect to make building blending more in the surrounding natural scenery, but later moss and plant were growing out of the porous surface of the volcanic rock.
This unexpected development revealed the potentiality of volcanic rock for fostering vegetation.
“I was born nearby beautiful mount Fuji with many volcanic rocks around and I noticed that plant grow more on them in the garden, so I understood that this is because the rock have small hole which make good place for vegetation and plant growth, so I had the idea of using such volcanic rock as an environment-friendly building material in different shapes,” said an official from Volcanic Rock Company.
Natural volcanic rock can be used in different size and shape, even cut into thin board of concrete with embedded volcanic rock that can be attached to the exterior of already existing surface.
Another material, which does not contain concrete, is super-thin, ultra-lightweight material which can be cut to any size and attached even to curved surface of different shape.
“Regarding the emission of CO2, The process of making concrete generates lot of CO2 emission, but in the case of natural material like volcanic rock the process does not include production of material because we use naturally available rock so the CO2 emission is very little,” said an official from Volcanic Rock Company.
The environment-friendly feature of volcanic rock makes it suitable to reviving the ecosystem of the urban areas when used as a construction material.