*1.1. Supplementary Cementitious Materials towards Construction Sustainability*

Global urbanization and economic growth have increased society's demand for new buildings and infrastructure and hence for concrete, the scale of usage of which makes it currently the most commonly consumed material, after water, worldwide [1] (pp. 35–42). However, the production process of cement, with its crucial constituent used as a binder, is based on quarrying, and requires high temperatures and considerable energy consumption, contributing to natural resource depletion and significant CO2 emission; it accounts for 5–8% of global emissions of this greenhouse gas [2] (pp. 169–174). Therefore, for the sake of natural environment, the construction sector is obligated to drastically reduce its CO2 emissions to reach the goal of sustainable development whilst simultaneously filling the increasing market demand for cementitious composites. One of the approaches to cope with this issue is to partially substitute cement with supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) with pozzolanic properties [3]. Despite the fact that a huge number of various waste materials and by-products derived from agricultural and industrial activities were investigated regarding such applicability, it is mainly fly ash, ground-granulated blast-furnace slag and silica fume that have already been implemented on industrial scale [4] (p. 3136).
