The Material Mix Podcast
Welcome to The Material Mix, the podcast series by Holcim exploring sustainable building materials innovation.
Episode 3 - designing with nature: from plACEMAKING TO PLACEKEEPING
Construction has long been framed as a trade-off with nature. We build, and nature retreats. But that assumption is increasingly outdated.
As biodiversity declines and climate pressures intensify, the built environment must shift from minimising harm to actively restoring and enhancing natural systems. With quarrying already having a strong track-record in supporting nature, attention is turning to how the cities and towns we live in can not only co-exist with nature but actively enhance it.
This episode explores a more ambitious idea: a nature positive future?
What if buildings, materials, and developments didn’t just reduce environmental impact, but actively improved ecosystems? What if urban spaces became habitats, water systems were regenerative, and construction actively contributed to biodiversity gains?
This isn’t just about “placemaking” anymore - it’s about placekeeping: designing and maintaining spaces where nature and people co-exist and thrive together over the long term.
Episode 2 - building it twice
In our second episode we cast our eye over the topic of the circular economy.
Construction has traditionally followed a linear model: extract, manufacture, build, demolish, then waste. Yet the built environment is also one of the richest material banks on earth. Aging assets should not just be materials waiting to be landfilled, they can be future resources.
In the UK alone, construction and demolition generate over 30% of our total landfill waste*. At the same time, we continue extracting vast quantities of virgin raw materials.
Circularity asks a radical but practical question: what if everything we build was designed not just to stand, but to be dismantled, reused, and reborn?
From recycled aggregates and reclaimed concrete fines to design for deconstruction and urban mining, this episode explores how the sector can move from linear consumption to regenerative systems, and what needs to change in mindset, policy, design, and economics to accelerate that shift.
Episode 1 - Mind the Carbon Gap
Our first episode, Mind the Carbon Gap, explores the path to decarbonisation for one of the UK’s most essential building materials, cement.
Cement is a versatile and important building commodity, but its production is also carbon intense, accounting for around 8% of global emissions and around 1.5% of all UK carbon emissions.
As an industry, we’re already exploring multiple mitigation measures to reduce the carbon per tonne in its production, but even with all this, there is still a gap to plug if we want to achieve net zero.
Ultimately, the best solution we have is to capture carbon at source, and re-use or safely store it away. How is the industry tackling this challenge?
Find out more in this episode of the material mix, where we’ll be unpacking the innovations, the policy shifts and the industry wide collaborations shaping the next generation of low carbon cement.
