For most people, ash just isn't cool anymore.

Whether from cigarettes, coal plants or steel making, we now know that activities that produce ash tend to be bad for the health of humans - and our planet.

But there are still many people in the world that think that ash is flash - many of whom meet each year at a conference called Ash Trans.

Rather than being cigarette-smoking industrial dinosaurs, these people are a future-thinking tech community focused on using the world's vast supplies of ash for beneficial purposes - including as a replacement for cement to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete.

This is a big deal for the planet: Currently the world manufactures around four billion tonnes of cement each year, emitting 1.7 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to 8% of global carbon emissions.

All the while there are billions of tonnes of ash stockpiled around the world left over from coal-fired power plants since the birth of the industrial revolution, including up to one billion tonnes of ash in dumps across the UK another billion in the USA, and four billion tonnes more in India alone.

While these estimates vary a lot, depending on the source and criteria, what's clear is that there is a lot of unused ash around the place that could be recycled into concrete to reduce carbon emissions.

And while coal-fired plants are being turned off in record numbers, in addition to these stockpiles are tens of millions of tonnes of ash still being produced, especially in India and China, that are currently being dumped because they are relatively uncreative and uneconomic to use in concrete.

This is where Neocrete comes in. In August Zarina spoke at the Ash Trans conference in Prague, discussing how Neocrete's technology can increase the reactivity of ash, making it perform more like cement. Neocrete's activator does this at a relatively low cost, without heat or other significant industrial processes, meaning that we can activate even lower quality ashes that are currently too expensive to use - and thus turn "problem ash into concrete cash".

Neocrete has been proven in scale trials to significantly increase the amount of low-grade ash that can be used to replace cement.

For example, with one prospective customer, with access to ungraded bottom ash, in scale trials we have increased the cement substitution capacity from 10% to 40%, making the ash economically viable to use as a cement substitute.

At Ash Trans we spoke with many ash suppliers, traders and people from across the cement and concrete industry about exciting applications for Neocrete to reduce carbon emissions and recycle waste.

We think this is pretty cool. So, while we are not advocating for new coal plants - or that you take up cigarette smoking - we would like you to get in touch if you have streams or stockpiles of ash that you would like to see re-homed in low carbon concrete.

Huge thanks to the team at Ash Trans for putting together another great conference - we hope to see you there next year!