The Guardian puts a spotlight on a hard truth the construction world has lived with for decades: concrete is everywhere, and the scale comes with real damage. Cement production drives a major share of global CO2 emissions, concrete intensifies urban heat, and the material demands enormous volumes of water. Add in the extraction of sand and raw inputs, plus the way concrete covers soil and disrupts natural systems, and the footprint gets bigger than most people realize.
Pretred exists because that footprint is not an abstract problem anymore. Specs, bids, and project requirements are changing. Owners and agencies are asking for lower-impact solutions. Contractors are being pushed to hit sustainability targets while still delivering performance and safety.
So we focus on a simple shift: stop treating concrete as the automatic answer for barriers and blocks. In many use cases, what teams need is a durable, heavy-duty safety product that performs on the jobsite. That does not have to mean another pour.
Pretred turns end-of-life tires into infrastructure-ready barriers and blocks, giving project teams a practical way to reduce reliance on concrete without asking them to compromise on real-world demands. It is circular manufacturing with a job to do: put waste to work, cut down on high-impact materials where it makes sense, and help move infrastructure forward with smarter inputs.
The point is not to pretend concrete disappears tomorrow. The point is that the default can change. Pretred is building the next option after concrete.