day five
Ash Grove, a CRH company, was founded in 1920. It was the winner of AWB’ s 2024 Leading Environmental Practices award. Its Seattle site on Marginal Way is located along the Duwamish River. It produces cement by taking raw materials such as limestone, sand and clay and heating them up to more than 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit to chemically transform them into a different structure. At the same time they co-process about 1.2 million used tires as a replacement for fossil fuel. These waste tires would otherwise go into a landfill. Most of its raw materials are barged in from Canada. Ash Grove ships cement from twelve cement plants and its network of 41 terminals located throughout the Midwest, Texas, and the western United States, and is one of the largest cement producers in North America. The company employs about 100 people at its Seattle site and 80,000 globally.
Ash Grove recently acquired Spot,( left) a Boston Dynamics robot that can climb stairs, pick itself up if it falls over, and is equipped with cameras and heat sensors to take readings in places that are difficult for humans.
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