The Last Word

The news in this month's Global Cement Magazine that Cemex is to institute a global water management strategy for its cement plants (and presumably all of its other industrial assets as well, since cement production is not necessarily a thirsty industry, but concrete production certainly is a major user of water) is a fantastic, far-sighted development.

In common with the other multi-nationals, most notably the signatories to the WBCSD's Cement Sustainability Initiative, Cemex has foreseen that sustainability is crucial for its continued existence. With the news that the company will 'regularise' its water management, with a view to reducing its specific water consumption, Cemex has brought to the forefront of its environmental agenda the issue of a The Last Word column, Dr Robert McCaffrey, thirsty world.

A shower is a wonderful thing. While you switch off and undertake your near-automatic ablutions, your mind can wander... and so it was this morning. As I stepped out of the shower, the idea was nearly fully formed (after having had a gestation period of several years). And here is that idea: the Global Cement Run.

As regular readers will know, I am a keen runner. I've done ten marathons and many other shorter races. I run at least once every week and have run in many places around the world, sometimes in the company of contacts in the cement industry. As a hobby, I also organise very tough running races in the UK - you can see all the details about them at www.Trionium.com. Annually, the races raise a decent amount for charity.

My daughter Jemima asked me earlier in the year, "Dad, what's the longest you've gone without food?" I wracked my brain to remember. Apart from an overnight fast for a cholesterol test, and perhaps missing the odd meal over the years, I had to admit that probably the longest I had gone without food was a paltry 14 hours.

To friends and colleagues, I'm well-known for becoming rather tetchy when I haven't had anything to eat (it's not just me, the rest of my family is the same and there will be plenty of people reading this who recognise the symptoms too). It's best to ask me important questions just after lunch, rather than just before. I'm familiar with some mild symptoms of hunger.

Are you wondering what's going on? Four years into the Great Recession, also known in Australia as the GFC or Global Financial Crisis, it might be worth having a pause to survey the landscape, particularly with regards to the impact of the crisis on the building materials industry.

As is well known, the global crisis was triggered by the collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage market, but this was not the only 'house of cards' waiting to fall. The ill-conceived Euro project was thrown together by European elites, without asking the majority of the European voting public and without first aligning the economic and fiscal policies of its constituent members. This inevitably led to the triumph of human nature over long-term good sense and a 'grab-all-you-can-while-the-going-is-good' mentality from some of the peripheral states. The credit crunch in the US - (actually first triggered when French banks woke up to impossibility of selling or even of assigning a value to the mortgage-backed securities that they held) - led to banks on both sides of the Atlantic mistrusting each other to the extent that they refused to do business with each other and instead were only willing to deal directly with the central banks in their own countries. The immediate decrease in credit availability was one of the factors that led to widespread economic weakness, but the uncertainty sparked by the acute collapse of several institutions in 2008-2009 made investors flee from decisions: we heard reports of companies bankrolling new plant projects in Russia calling up the equipment suppliers and shouting at them to 'cancel all the orders.'

Have you noticed that recently there's been a little show happening up the road from us in London, called 'The Olympics'?

Anywhere we go in the world, we'll be able to chat about what we saw at the Olympics, whether it be

London, Beijing or an earlier games - and there are not many experiences that we have in common with the rest of the world's population. As one of the most-watched events in the world, the Olympics unite us in our humanity. They are, after all, the competition of mere humans, powered just by food and drink (shame on the drugs cheats - there should be lifetime bans for all of them), with the same amount of oxygen (barring the use of blood doping) to power their metabolism and muscles and with results dependent on genetics, talent, hard work, personality and good luck.