Thursday, March 5, 2015

The Future of Eco-Friendly Brick

Over 1.3 trillion bricks are manufactured each year.  This is a big problem because the manufacturing of  brick can be very destructive to our environment.  The use of coal and wood fired kilns omit large amounts of pollutants into our atmosphere.  Most of the brick in the world is manufactured overseas in China, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh while nations like Vietnam are working to ramp up production.  A significant amount of the bricks manufactured in developing countries are still made in primitive kilns.   These kilns are causing severe air pollution in their immediate areas and groups like Clean Air Task Force are pushing back and exposing this pollution for what it is.

Eco-friendly brick is still very much a developing industry.  One developing option in Australia is called Hempcrete bricks.  The are an environmentally friendly alternative to concrete, ‘hempcrete’ is made of hemp, lime and water. The material is eco-friendly and carbon negative due to the amount of carbon dioxide stored during the growing and harvesting of the hemp.  Another option is a recycled glass brick being developed by BEEcycle.   BEEcycle is currently researching a solution for glass waste by breaking down glass bottles into sand which is then used to create eco-bricks for paving and construction.  A machine called a  GS100 is designed to turn glass waste into sand grade sizes. The glass is then used to replace normal sand in brick makingthe eco-bricks more eco-friendly with over 70% of it being waste material. At the same time, the eco-brick looks, feels and functionality is exactly the same as conventional bricks.  For more information on recycled glass bricks please visit beecycle.co.uk




No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank your for your comment or question. If you asked a question, we'll do our best to answer it with in a few days. Thanks for reading! Best regards, Jay Wanty