Eco-friendly bricks

Prof Gabriela Medero

The construction and demolition sector is the largest contributor of waste globally. Around a third of the one hundred and twenty million tonnes of waste produced in the UK comes from construction and demolition.

Transcript

Forty five percent of total UK carbon emissions come from construction and thirty two percent of landfill waste comes from construction and demolition in the country.

This isn't sustainable at all and now, the UK's construction industry is under increasing pressure to reduce waste and meet recycling targets of 70% of all building waste to be recycled from the year 2020.

So, what's the solution?

Here at Heriot-Watt, we've created a brick made of 90% recycled construction and demolition waste and requires one tenth of the energy to manufacture compared to traditional bricks.

This allows a much more circular approach as taking the waste from a building site, recycling it, making it into a new building material and taking it back to the building site will answer so many problems for the industry.