If coal-fired power plants go offline, an important source of the building material dries up. Should gypsum be mined from nature in the future, landscapes formed in millions of years will be destroyed. A violent argument has broken out.
Since it has been shown in TV series how ruins of buildings can be transformed into catalog-ready feel-good landscapes at record speed, plasterboard has been known to many people. The lightweight, fire-proof panels are considered a miracle weapon from the hardware store for setting up new walls quickly and without a concrete mixer. There is hardly an apartment or an open-plan office in which they cannot be found. But gypsum, a white salt containing sulfur and calcium, could soon become scarce – at least in Germany.