Yale鈥檚 ongoing construction on upper Science Hill will feature 600,000 gross square feet for the School of Engineering and Applied Science and more. In accordance with Yale鈥檚 promise to achieve net-zero carbon emissions on campus by 2035 and zero actual carbon emissions by 2050, the development will include a thermal utilities plant that will produce energy for the facilities.
But even if operations are sustained by on-site energy production, creating a building from raw materials is quite carbon-intensive. Instead, some of Yale鈥檚 building materials will use Pozzotive, an industrial filler made from recycled glass such as drink bottles 鈥� the equivalent of 3.5 million of them, to be precise, according to a slideshow used during a recent tour of the glass recycling facility.
At the tour last month, organized by several students at Yale鈥檚 School of the Environment, a group of Yale affiliates explored Urban Mining Industries鈥檚 facility in Beacon Falls, Connecticut, where recycled glass is processed and turned into a powdery building material known as pozzolan.