Written by nutty professor "Aki Ishida, Professor and Director, College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design, Washington University in St. Louis" Who made this presumably mediocre female professor a director (maybe she is a first and she is Asian)?
Oh, glass does not grow on sustainably grown trees! Is that her point? Maybe we should make glass like panels from fossil fuels? What are the alternatives and how affordable?
What the professor describes is well known for a very long time! She regurgitates! The alternatives she mentions are nothing new either etc.
Caveat: I did not read the entire article!
"The word “local” has become synonymous with sustainability [???], whether it’s food, clothes or the materials used to construct buildings. But while consumers can probably go to a local lumberyard to buy lumber from sustainably grown trees cut at nearby sawmills, no one asks for local glass [???].
If they did, it would be hard to give an answer.
The raw materials that go into glass – silica sand, soda ash and limestone – are natural, but the sources of those materials are rarely known to the buyer.
The process by which sand becomes sheets of glass is often far from transparent. The sand, which makes up over 70% of glass, could come from a faraway riverbed, lakeshore or inland limestone outcrop. Sand with at least 95% silica content is called silica sand, and only the purest is suitable for architectural glass production. Such sand is found in limited areas. ...
Glass’s climate impact
Glass walls common in high-rise buildings today have other drawbacks. They help to heat up the room during increasingly hot summers and contribute to heat loss in winter, increasing dependence on artificial cooling and heating.
The glassmaking process is energy intensive and relies on nonrenewable resources.
To bring sand to its molten state, the furnace must be heated to over 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celisus) for as long as 50 hours, which requires burning fossil fuels such as natural gas, releasing greenhouse gases. Once heated to that temperature, the furnace runs 24/7 and is rarely shut down. ..."
Where does your glass come from?
Official portrait of professor Aki Ishida (Source)
