Rick Fox Combatting Climate Change With Green Concrete

by Jeroslyn JoVonn

April 19, 2024

Rick Fox is leading the charge within the green concrete industry.

There are many contributing factors to climate change, including the cement used in construction projects. It’s why NBA champion Rick Fox is going full force with his green concrete startup, Partanna Global Inc.

When he’s not acting on screen, serving as an E-sports executive, or as the Ambassador at Large for the Bahamas, the former Laker has been busy with his Bahamas-based concrete company. Through Partanna Global, Fox’s team is hard at work swapping out cement with a proprietary mix consisting of blast-furnace slag from steel-making, Bloomberg reports.

The materials, such as volcanic ash, are combined with brine, a fluid waste made from plants or crushed rocks, to absorb carbon dioxide. Unlike most cement, Partanna’s process weeds out the burning of fossil fuels or analogous emissions from cooking limestone.

With cement production being responsible for about 6% of all carbon dioxide emissions, Partanna is among dozens of competing companies trying to reinvent the global concrete industry that’s estimated to be near $1 trillion by 2030.

“We have a formula that is going to change the world for the better,” Fox said. “Focus on that. That’s the star, right?”

Fox’s Hollywood publicist and talent manager introduced him to the idea of concrete that breathes like a tree.

“I was thinking to myself, ‘Concrete that acts like a tree? How does that even work?’” Fox recalls. “I walk Wilshire every day, and I see trees busting out of the sidewalk with the concrete. They don’t really get along. To me, it didn’t make sense.”

After trial, error, and research, Partanna Global was launched in 2021. The startup plans to build 29 more houses in the Bahamas and bigger designs outside of the Caribbean country.

Fox is hoping to shift the mindset of construction companies looking to hold off on going green until 2050. “We don’t have time,” Fox told Wired in January. “If you think you have until 2050 to be sustainable, then you’re not under pressure.”

“You’re not feeling the heat, like the countries in the Caribbean,” he added. “They put their goal way out there. The Bahamas doesn’t have until 2050. The beach I grew up on in the Bahamas is no longer a beach.”