An editor’s job is to package text for the clear and efficient transfer of information. Much of this involves ‘extracting the juice’ from information presented by authors, interviewees or PR firms, so that they can be shown in the best possible light. A large part of this is knowing what to omit, as the clarity and order of the text are also critical.
We ‘juggle’ a lot of words at Global Cement and, in our December 2019 issue, we looked back at the trends of key words and phrases used throughout the 2010s. The top words in the December 2009 - January 2010 issue (after removal of a number high-frequency words) were: slag, emissions, production, CO2 and fuels. The most popular two word phrases included alternative fuels, CO2 emissions and low-carbon, an indication that discussion of sustainable practices has long been part of our industry.
When I began the analysis, I had anticipated that ‘green’ phrases would become more prominent over time. However, by the time of the analysis in late 2019 not much had changed. ‘Production’ was once again the top ‘non-frequent’ word in the November 2019. The prevalence of sustainable phrases was broadly the same throughout the decade. It seems that sustainable practices were just one of several factors to consider during the day-to-day process of making cement.
Figure 1: ‘Sustainable’ by xkcd’s Randall Munroe. The main text of this page uses ‘sustainable,’ eight times. This is 1.48% of the total words in the text, giving it an ‘xkcd sustainability date’ somewhere in the 2060s. Source: https://xkcd.com/1007.
I must admit that the methodology I used was fairly unwieldy and did not permit the analysis of as many issues as I would have liked. Had I been able to delve into more issues, it is possible that deeper patterns would have been revealed, as shown in Figure 1. Taken from the popular web comic xkcd, Figure 1 is a logarithmic plot that shows the prevalence of the word ‘sustainable’ in
English-language text since 1950. The data up to 2016 is based on Google Ngrams data. Randall Munroe, the polymath behind xkcd, then extrapolates the line of best fit to its illogical conclusion. By 2109, he ‘predicts’ that all sentences will just be the word ‘sustainable’ repeated over and over.
Figure 1 certainly shows an increase in discussion of sustainable practices over time, but rather less about how that translates to sustainable industrial and business practices. Given the topics of some other xkcd comics,1 I think that’s the point: Too much word juggling, not enough action. This is a common criticism.
However, as I look over the content of this September 2020 issue (during yet another >30°C day in the UK), I think we may be at a tipping point. This issue is packed not with distant promises but solid actions from cement producers, suppliers and associations. Every major producer now has some form of low-CO2 cement or concrete product and many are using offsetting to go completely CO2-free. There are myriad competing CO2 capture technolgies, several of which are now commercial. Ternary cements containing calcined clays are a reality. Digitisation has opened the door to greater process and resource efficiency. These are some of the technologies and actions that will help our sector towards meeting its 2050 Paris Agreement targets. For its part, Global Cement will continue to juggle sustainable topics to the top of the pile, to further help the sector in its goals.
1. For arguably the clearest visual demonstration of the historical, ongoing and future changes to our climate visit: https://xkcd.com/1732.