Topic
Shipping containers hold the potential to revolutionize urban housing. First of three parts.
City Centre Lofts is slated to become the first mid-rise to be built out of shipping containers in North America. It will be constructed using 50 per cent recycled material.
The Salt Lake City building was designed by architect Adam Kalkin.
The building's footprint is about the same size as a common 25- by 120-foot Vancouver Lot.
This corner building was designed for Lafeyette Street in New York City, but would be easy to envision in downtown Vancouver.
This project is being planned by the developer of Container City in London. It calls for 70 shipping containers to create 15 units. The estimated installation time is 10 days.
Container-based buildings are permanent structures. Open floor plans such as this can cost less to build using shipping containers than wood or concrete, because long steel beams are included in the price of the used container.
The Seatrain house employs large glass panels to connect the Los Angeles home to its private garden.
In this house, each shipping container provides a distinct function: one is a library, another a dining room and office space, another as bathroom and laundry, and yet another as master bedroom.
Some buildings, such as this London hotel, conceal the shipping containers that support them. TraveLodge assembled this eight-storey building out of 86 shipping containers…
...here's a look at the same hotel under construction. The custom containers were built and completely fitted out at a factory in Shenzen, China. Aided by this rapid construction technique, TraveLodge aims to build 670 hotels in the UK, Ireland and Spain by 2020.
Similarly, the 73 shipping containers that form The Riverside Building
The Riverside Building was developed by Urban Space Management a part of a group of London-area projects known collectively as Container City. The group include office space, retail space, artist studios, a nursery, and homes.
"This modular technology enables construction times and cost to be reduced by up to half that of traditional building techniques while remaining significantly more environmentally friendly," claims Urban Space Management.
Platoon Kunsthalle is an artists space in Seoul that celebrates its use of containers. Platoon was built from 28 shipping containers in Seoul, Korea, where many businesses operate from converted shipping containers.
At the heart of Platoon's interior stands the bar --- also fashioned from a shipping container. Platoon Kunsthalle is not about entertainment,” the group states. "The program will provide a communication platform for anybody interested in subcultural creative fields like street art, graphic design, fashion, video art, programming, music, club culture, political activism etc.
Pushing the levitational envelope just a bit further still is this mobile retail store built for the shoe company Puma.
…The Puma store, designed by LOT-EK, followed the Volvo Ocean Race from port to port during 2008-2009. It was disassembled and reassembled in Alicante, Boston, and Stockholm.
…The Puma store uses 24 containers to create an 11,000-square-foot pavilion that includes a bar and two large decks.
Infill development is arguably the most cost-effective application of container-based construction. Shipping containers are built to stack vertically, as dramatically demonstrated by the puckish Alley House in Antwerp. On a lot only eight feet wide, the Alley House provides an office at ground level, a dining area on the second storey, a living room on the third storey, and a bedroom on the fourth.
The Keetwonen complex in Amsterdam is the largest container project in the world. It houses 1,000 university students in small suites stacked five stories high. These simple pre-fab container homes are sold for between $30,000 and $60,000 per unit --- a mere fraction of the $300,000 per unit that B.C. Housing is paying to build homeless housing in Vancouver.
Though only 320 square feet, each suite has separate sleeping and living rooms, a full kitchen and bath, large windows and a private balcony. The units are well insulated and served by a central heating system. The complex has high speed Internet and dedicated bike parking.
Keetwonen's social interaction is part of its appeal. The complex hosts cafes, shops, art studios and even mini-gyms. When it was built in 2005, Keetwonen was expected to serve only five years. But it proved particularly popular with students --- and affordable for the university --- so its life expectancy has been pushed back to 2016.
Vancouver mayor 'definitely interested' in temporary villages for hundreds.
Many are made in BC. Are they a real housing solution? A Tyee Special Report.
Vancouver boasts both the "Greenest Neighbourhood in the World" -- the LEED certified Olympic Athlete's Village -- as well as the world's first LEED Platinum convention centre.
But the city that calls itself the "Green Capital" has shown surprisingly little interest in a rapidly emerging building technology that promises to become not only far more environmentally friendly but also significantly less expensive than the heavy concrete construction that has reshaped the city's skyline. Indeed, Canada's first modern home built this way stands not in the Terminal City, but across the straight in Victoria.
Over the next few days, The Tyee will report on how intermodal shipping containers -- those 40-foot steel boxes that flow through the region's ports at the rate of more than two million a year -- are being refashioned into affordable green buildings across Europe and Asia.
And on Thursday evening, the Tyee Solutions Society will join with Architecture For Humanity Vancouver and the Design Foundation of British Columbia to kick-off the Quick Homes Superchallenge, a two-part charrette aimed at generating affordable housing concepts for public discussion.
The box that changed the world
The humble steel boxes in which goods are shipped, trained and trucked around the world touched off an economic "revolution," according to Mark Levinson, author of The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.
Levinson chronicles the 18 million big steel boxes that make globalization possible, flooding markets with low-cost consumer goods from China, filling cities with cut-rate department stores such as Wal-Mart, and felling wide swaths of the North American manufacturing sector and the high-paying jobs it provided.
"In 1956, the world was full of small manufacturers selling locally," Levinson writes, "by the end of the twentieth century, purely local markets for goods of any sort were few and far between."
One of the world's first purpose-built intermodal container ships set sail from North Vancouver in November of 1955. The Clifford J. Rodgers carried 600 containers to Skagway, Alaska, where they were loaded on to rail to be carried over the White Pass to the Yukon.
Today, Port Metro Vancouver is Canada's busiest port. More than two million "twenty-foot equivalent units," or TEUs, flow through every year, according to port records. (Containers come in five basic sizes. A standard 20-foot-long by 8-foot-wide container equals one TEU. A 40-foot container is two TEUs.)
The vast majority of containers arriving in Metro ports hail from China, followed by Japan and Korea. And most return to the nations that sent them. But almost 100,000 get left behind each year.
In 2009, for example, records show that a total of 1,122,849 TEUs entered Port Metro Vancouver, while only while 1,029,613 TEUs were shipped outbound. That's a difference of 93,236 containers.
Likewise, in 2008, Metro ports took in 96,509 more TEUs than they sent away.
Those containers don't all pile up in the Lower Mainland. Most leave the region via truck or rail car, and many of those ultimately leave Canada via a border crossing or another seaport. But North America's longstanding imbalance of trade with China and other Asian exporters tends to create a backwash of surplus containers in places Vancouver and other port cities.
Greener than concrete, stronger than wood
Containers are built to stack nine high while carrying 60,000 pounds on a deck that's pitching on the open ocean. They are built to survive decades of service in a marine environment, and, if kept painted, will last indefinitely as part of a building.
"These are just big steel boxes," said Barry Naef, who directs the GreenCube Network and the Intermodal Steel Building Unit (ISBU) Association. Naef noted that these boxes present the opportunity to not merely recycle but creatively reuse what is arguably the most durable waste product of the globalization era. Stranded containers that are not repurposed tend to be melted down. As fuel costs rise, containers on the wrong side of the ocean can become worth more as scrap metal than the cost of shipping them back to China empty.
A typical 40-foot container represents about 8,000 pounds of steel, which can require about 8,000 kilowatt-hours of energy to melt and remanufacture. That's about half of what a typical home uses in a year. As a result, buildings created from used shipping containers function like carbon reduction and long-term storage devices.
At the same time, containers tend to replace concrete in more urban settings, due to the metal boxes' strength and easy stackability. And cement is far from green.
The manufacturing of cement is the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions after fossil fuel consumption, according to U.S. government statistics. A report by the World Business Council found that every ten pounds of cement releases nine pounds of carbon dioxide emission.
But according to Barry Naef, the biggest green advantage of shipping containers may be their strength.
"Their strength allows the structure to provide green roofs, green walls, solar hot water roofs, all without additional supports," Naef said. "It's hard to do these things on a wood-frame structure. "Concrete is great. But when you have to go spend so much to do a green roof, I don't think it winds up getting built."
Construction costs 25 per cent less
In port regions such as Vancouver, end-of-life shipping containers are often sold for as little as $1,500 in the Lower Mainland, while pristine 40-foot "high cubes" -- which feature nine-and-a-half-foot ceilings -- can fetch $4,000. Either way, it's substantially less than the cost of building a similar box out of wood or concrete.
The cost to convert that box to a home varies widely.
Charities providing housing to Maquiladora workers in Mexico are able to convert used shipping containers into simple homes for about $15,000 (excluding land costs). Those homes are small, but they come complete with doors, windows, a full bathroom and kitchen appliances for less money than most Canadians spend on a car.
Companies that provide container-based worker housing to the oil and mining industries sell heavily built pre-fab units for prices that start in the range of $35,000 per container unit. Some of these are heavily insulated for arctic conditions. Others include generators and water-processing plants. (More on these units on Wednesday.)
Custom home builders report saving an average of about 25 per cent against what a comparable home would have cost to build, according to Naef. He said cost savings vary widely according to how many hurdles are thrown up by local zoning and building code officials.
"Local building codes are a real hurdle for some builders," Naef said.
"We need to do a much better job of educating zoning boards and building inspectors," he said. "Each building inspector seems to have a different reason why they wouldn't let someone build with shipping containers. Many objections are based on false assumptions."
For example, he noted that many local building codes still require studding out all the walls in order to comply with outdated zoning ordinances. "This unnecessary duplication reduces --- but still does not eliminate --- the cost effectiveness of container-based construction," Naef said.
New built form emerging in Europe and Asia
In dense cities such as Vancouver, however, the greatest cost savings and the most significant green advantages generally come down to the same thing: The less land a home requires, the better.
Containers are built to stack. And it has been through the creative assembly of stacks of containers -- coupled with the innovative ways of opening up the interiors -- that a new built form has begun to emerge in Europe and Asia. Here are a few examples:
Container City is a collection of London-area developments drawing on container techniques perfected by a company called Urban Space Management. The first project was built in East London, in 2001. The Container City projects include offices, retail shops, artists studios, a nursery, a youth centre, and a school as well as housing.
"This modular technology enables construction times and cost to be reduced by up to half that of traditional building techniques while remaining significantly more environmentally friendly," states Urban Space Management.
Keetwonen is the world's largest container housing project, as well as one of the simplest. The project is a student village built from 1,050 containers near Amsterdam city center.
Though only 320 square feet, each suite has separate sleeping and living rooms, a full kitchen and bath, large windows and a private balcony. The units are well insulated and served by a central heating system. The complex hosts cafes, shops, art studios and even mini-gyms.
And while some container projects strive to conceal the container's industrial essence, a Korean project, Platoon Kunsthalle, takes the opposite approach. The Seoul artists centre was created from 28 containers.
Next in the series: A look inside one of Canada's first homes built with shipping containers. You can also click here to download a copy of the entire series in PDF. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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Urbanismo
3 years ago
Packsack living . . .
Sorry pal . . .
http://members.shaw.ca/urbanismo/Packsack.1967.pdf
You're half a century behind . . .
RickW
3 years ago
Considering Suburbia Will Never Submit Easily to These "Boxes"..
...perhaps the way to introduce this concept into society would be our school buildings, which I have maintained for decades now should have been modular in design - and thus able to expand or contract, as the population demands dictate. But instead, we have financed architectural 'monuments' (aka disasters) to the benefit of architects and contractors, with little thought given to the purpose of schools. Then we close them down for "budgetary considerations".
And maybe this is one route to go for hospitals as well, considering such pesky "nuisances" as MRSA and C. difficile demand individual accommodations instead of wards.
freebear
3 years ago
Advanced society
As pointed out by RickW, 'we' can be so stupid when we 'plan, design, and build' things/communities.
Conductor274
3 years ago
Housing for the homeless
This idea would provide affordable housing units for our growing homeless population.
Jerry Munro
3 years ago
What passes for green...
May work for the "childless" and endless "immigrant" growth society, but damned if I'd want to raise a normal family in them. What passes for "green" sometimes, and which still accepts the "endless growth" mantra of capitalism, the defining problem, I cannot believe sometimes.
This is "corporatist green", not "real people let alone "nature green". Already this bs has resulted in an unemployed population in the US, the equals or exceeds the population of Canada. (And creates a very dangerous situation for ourselves, in the "suck" that results.)
The defining problem, in major part an extension of the dynamics built into capitalism, is too many people (from immigration, not the birthrate in North America), and over development and resource exploitation to meet our own needs AND, especially in our case ABROAD. How we "manage" this in the future, while still maintaining our own peoples's essential needs, until people numbers and planetary carrying capacity are brought back into some more healthy semblance of balance, is what is really going to decide whether there is a long term future out there for our species or not. As opposed to just endlessly seeking to ratchet up more GDP and population growth, for the sake of the bottom line of the top 1%, and piling the social result higher and higher in shipping containers.
Such notions as packing more and more folks into shipping containers is not only some kind of a sick statement of capitalism and its value system, it is a distraction.
Like I say, what passes for green sometimes, just boggles the mind. Out the other end of those dressed up shipping containers, for more and more land use consumption and energy etc inputs, still comes more and more copious quantities of poop and pee, waste water and street pollution flowing into already declining quality natural water courses.
We need to BEGIN, at least, to plug the population growth inputs, especially coming in from abroad, in my view, and the "suck" ever coming in for more of our "resource stuff" from the US, and actually BEGIN to dampen down the demand growth that creates the need for endless resource and other GDP growth elements,that is actually at the heart of the problem. Instead, focus on adequately meeting the needs of those we have, and over time, if we decide that is appropriate, reducing their numbers with sane birth control policies. (Though America actually needs this latter much more than we do. Though there too, left to their actual birthrate, their numbers are already in decline as well.)
Were it not but for capitalism driving it all, and this nonsence of packing folks into shipping containers.
freebear
3 years ago
Without sacrifice; no sustainability
Until then, its moot!
gwebster
3 years ago
Contaminants in shipping containers
I have considered using a recycled shipping container to build a laneway house in my backyard, but I wonder about potential contamination issues. Have these containers been sprayed with insecticides or fungicides? What other chemicals might have been used in the goods originally shipped in these containers? I haven't seen any discussion about this yet.
Fiat lux
3 years ago
The proposed benefits of the
The proposed benefits of the shipping containers aside, globalization is a racket by the multinational corporate mafia to take control and collectivize the world economy to an extent the communists could never dream about.
Goods imported from China are not "cheaper", but more expensive in real terms, with the growing poverty, homelessness, cancer/diabetes/autism etc. epidemics and climate change paying the real costs.
Costs can not be cut, only transferred on others, the environment and the future.
In 1956 people had well paid full time jobs, could afford to buy homes and feed their families, cancers were 2% overall, no foodbanks, no homeless.
The purpose of economic theories, especially of the garbage sciences of communism and capitalism, has always been the distortion of real values through ideological brainwash and imaginary monetary figures, to transfer the real costs on the shoulders of others, for the establishment of ruling class dictatorships, with multimillion salaries, while their part timer, minimum wage employees are standing in the foodbank lines to feed their kinds. .
As we have it now with glorious "globalization" .
Ed Deak.
Adam M
3 years ago
gwebster
Being in the construction industry, I would assume that containers would have to be individually assessed for contamination. I imagine that part of refurbishment would also include sandblasting and treating the rusted interiors (and exteriors) before even bringing them out to a site.
More generally, this would probably require a large offsite shop, which would add costs. Steelwork is generally more expensive per labour hour than carpentry, and if relying on welds for stability/safety, labour costs could be high, and development time long. Imagine a screw-up at the shop and making field repairs... I can tell you right now that it happens all the time on big projects. The cost-benefit against concrete, which can get expensive, would have to be measured against the current market. I would assume you would want to buy your shipping containers in a down market, as they can be exponentially cheaper than when they are needed to - you know - ship stuff.
That being said, I think this is pretty cool and I'm looking forward to the series. Maybe I'll get some answers, see if I should buy some containers or what!
Monte Paulsen
3 years ago
Contaminants
Thanks for asking, gwebster. This was one of the interesting minor points that didn't make it into the final draft of this week's series.
Some nations (Australia, for example) require the plywood floors in shipping containers to be treated with pesticides. The idea is to keep pests from migrating in these boxes. As a result, many container floors contain pesticides.
Builders using existing containers resolve this issue in one of three ways: Some remove the old floors entirely; some put a barrier between the old plywood and the new floor; some use newer containers that have only made one or two trips and have never been treated.
jwstewart
3 years ago
For Sale - 1 Shipping container home.
http://winnipeg.kijiji.ca/c-housing-housing-for-sale-Shipping-Container-Converted-to-Living-Space-W0QQAdIdZ192210400
Any takers?
freebear
3 years ago
Where do the pesticide treated floors go?
I have unloaded containers and seen bugs from who knows where!
Perhaps just making new containers out of recycled steel would avoid the contaminant issue.
I'll wager after a calamity, instead of tents, containers will be used as homes instead; unkless its -40!
Would a steel container be warm enouh?
How much insulation would be needed and would there be any room left to live in?
Of course all moot as wise Ed Deaks notes above.
freebear
3 years ago
Typos!
unless its -40
and
enough!
Lloyd Alter
3 years ago
invented in Vancouver
I am so happy that you got it right about the shipping container being invented in Vancouver and NOT by Malcolm Mclean as it says in the Box. Peter Hunter's book "The Magic Box" written in 1993 clearly shows that it was predated. I wrote about it here:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/04/happy_53rd_birt_1.php
Monte Paulsen
3 years ago
insulation
Tomorrow's article will discuss insulation briefly.
Many builders are spraying foam into two-inch interior walls. The foam, which can be soy-based, delivers much more R-value per inch than batt insulation. So effecient that these containers are more popular than wood-fram modules in Arab states and Arctic camps precisely because of the insulation.
freebear
3 years ago
Next olympic village?
As I said, if no one willing to sacrifice......
alive
3 years ago
Yeah but:
But would you want to live in one?
Don_EC
3 years ago
Haiti
With so many 'surplus' containers in North America, since the Haiti earth quake, I have been wondering why donated containers -- even without improvements -- might not represent a potentially-more-useful temporary shelter than thousands of tents?
This article suggests more elaborate usage, and this could certainly be considered in the long run. But if you gave me an option of occupying a tent or having a container in which to set up a temporary home, I think I would go for the container. And considering the ingenuity of the Haitians, I expect that in short order, they would have done conversions to make them very habitable.
As well, I expect that they would be fairly earthquake proof, if located on level ground and not stacked.
Bytesmiths
3 years ago
What is the "R" value of these?
I can't imagine they are very well insulated, unless you get premium units designed for refrigerated or heated goods.
That may result in some of the building code problems, as modern codes require a certain level of energy efficiency.
RickW
3 years ago
alive
Yep!
Did you see the video on the ad for a unit in Roland, Manitoba? Looks right cozy!
RickW
3 years ago
coyoteman
Before you condemn the use of these boxes for housing, perhaps this might be a way to check the rediculous price that housing has gotten to (much more than the average family can afford).
lynn
3 years ago
Be careful what you help to make "sustainable":
"Levinson chronicles the 18 million big steel boxes that make globalization possible, flooding markets with low-cost consumer goods from China, filling cities with cut-rate department stores such as Wal-Mart, and felling wide swaths of the North American manufacturing sector and the high-paying jobs it provided."
Nothing like buying into what is killing you!
zalm
3 years ago
As always
The question is not "what to live in" but "where".
Jerry Munro
3 years ago
The Many Faces of Capitalism...
"Nothing like buying into what is killing you!" wrote Lynn.
Which I hope my good friend Rick has made a point of reading and "thunking" upon.
The "global market" to which capitalism has hoodwinked us all into aspiring to, and of which we have this shipping container glut now as part and a waste product of, is the "problem" to the current "browned" and "unemployed" as opposed to "green" world.
The carrot to draw us in further here is, of course, the shipping container dressed up as a solution for what to do about "sleeping arrangements" for surplus and under-paid workers, and deforestation. (Just dig bigger and bigger strip mined holes into the ground for more iron ore to make steel, with which to make more shipping containers.
This isn't a solution to anything... just another "after life", added value option for what to do with a waste product of globalization. Now let's watch the price of these go up and up on the so-called "free real estate market", until they too are out of the reach of the lower orders of the class system. (Then finally into the land fills of the planet.)
They are there so long as we all effectively sanction the activities of globalization, no doubt, and may or will be used for their after prime life value, no doubt.Capitalism knows how to suck a thing dry, for sure. But as a solution to the problem of "green" affordable housing for the under-class masses, they friggin' well are not.
They system has more ways of sucking us all into effectively sanctioning it and its globalization, endless growth agenda, even its liberal and left-lite critics, than there are pebbles on all the polluted beaches of the world.
See, globalization works for humanity. It provides cheap containerized warehousing for the dispossessed and impoverished it throws off itself, as a byproduct of its endless growth activity. Capitalism does have a human/humane face.
jwstewart
3 years ago
Well, if nothing else...
they would be useful for housing proletariats prior to their emulsification into soylent geen.
zalm
3 years ago
Geez
"We need to BEGIN, at least, to plug the population growth inputs, especially coming in from abroad, in my view,"
I missed that until the ever-perceptive RickW pointed it out above, Coyoteman. I'm not sure if I'm guessing correctly what you're after here, but if you think immigration's too high, except as a solution to our birthrate woes, and that birthrate problems in other countries should be handled in other countries by birth control, I can't agree.
I'm looking for the article but I simply can't find it now....
Nonetheless, it was one that made the link for me between a couple of things I already knew and a couple I didn't.
One that I knew was that total fertility is defined by scarcity of opportunity in the host country - those who have no opportunity to better themselves, who remain poor, hungry and jobless, will have higher total fertility. Contraception doesn't work unless you have a totalitarian state like China to administer birth control.
Another was that immigration, formerly touted as the saviour of our pensions schemes, health care, and tax base, by providing millions of new income earners and taxpayers, is proving to be anything but as the demographics of the immigrants to Canada trends toward becoming remarkably like Canada's own within a decade or two. That means 1.73 kids per family, two working parents driving up the prices paid for things in limited supply such as housing in desirable areas, and obscure demands on the health care system, such as diabetes as a disease out of control in South Asian communities.
One I didn't is that we are no longer seeing the cream of other countries applying to come to Canada to be our new tax base. The doctors, lawyers and businesspeople are staying home where the opportunity is getting better and better, and it is not necessary to uproot home and hearth to make a way in a new country as a taxi-driver
A second thing I didn't know was the math of immigration still leads to collapse of our pensions, tax and health care schemes. It merely takes a few years longer.
The only effective solution to lower total fertility is equality of opportunity. This allows families to feed and house themselves and put away a little for education, health care and a coffee down at the local once in a while. And astoundingly, once you have that, the birth rate drops off like a stone. The only caveat is that it must be applied everywhere in the world to be effective. And unfortunately, our western world's most prolific export lately has been inequality, in the form of war.
I wish I could find that article again. It was from one of those obscure right-wing think tanks that, like stopped clocks, tend to be right ever once in a while. Perhaps others can point me back to it.
.
lynn
3 years ago
Gulp
Quote:
"The carrot to draw us in further here is, of course, the shipping container dressed up as a solution for what to do about "sleeping arrangements" for surplus and under-paid workers, and deforestation. (Just dig bigger and bigger strip mined holes into the ground for more iron ore to make steel, with which to make more shipping containers."
Well said, coyoteman. I'm so glad you wrote this.
That is the crazy logic we are being asked to swallow here....
Why would we want to help create a further need for shipping containers, further expand their market, and thus help sustain these big steel boxes.... when their sole raison d'etre has been to sustain globalization?
As you clearly state: "They are there so long as we all effectively sanction the activities of globalization."
That is what we are doing - "sanctioning" the very thing that is steam-rolling over us all. Is that not suicidal?
Here we go again, one complicit foot in, one foot out. What kind fools are we to collaborate so willingly with the process of own demise? Really, we are doomed if we continue this way.
And here, as coyoteman astutely writes again, is their clever sell job, painted delectably green and human, and presented for our mass consumption:
Quote: "See, globalization works for humanity. It provides cheap containerized warehousing for the dispossessed and impoverished it throws off itself, as a byproduct of its endless growth activity. Capitalism does have a human/humane face."
Why it's a singing commercial -
For green, affordable housing...
As Marshall McLuhan once said:
"The modern Little Red Riding Hood, reared on singing commercials, has no objection to being eaten by the wolf."
dave49
3 years ago
The "Green Capital"???
The whole "Green Capital" idea is not going to go very far if the permitting folks at City of Vancouver continue their insistence on over-engineering the housing stock. I've talked to many homeowners and builders who want to try innovative and green renovations, only to get slapped down by permit staff or inspectors.
Bill-V
3 years ago
Basic chemistry
Some people don't remember Chemistry 12.
Yes making cement (not concrete, cement) produces a lot of CO2.
But when cement sets, what is it doing? Yes, it absorbs CO2 and lockd it in.
Remember the making of lime?
CaCO3 -->> Ca0 + CO2