The UK’s biggest consumer of natural resources is the construction industry, according to Wrap. According to their study, the sector uses 400 million tonnes of material every year, which results in 100 million tonnes of waste being produced.  Added to that is the Waste Framework Directive that is striving to recycle 70% of all construction waste by the end of 2021; the construction industry have a big headache.

Globally the industry have been looking into the problem and there are many products being produced from construction waste like the Peruvian start-up Ciclo  –https://www.livingcircular.veolia.com/en/city/bricks-made-construction-waste   or the German company Interior Park who produce an urban terrazzo – https://interiorpark.com/en/flooring-urban-terrazzo  made of recycled demolition waste.

The K-Briq by Kenoteq – https://kenoteq.com/ –  is just one of the products that has been developed to reuse materials from the construction industry like construction and demolition waste (concrete), plasterboard and pigments; about 90% of the product is from recycled materials.

What is more it only uses 1/10 of the carbon footprint of traditional clay bricks and 14% of concrete blocks by weight and uses far less energy than ordinary bricks as they are cured not fired at extreme temperatures. Find out more in this presentation from Dr Ben Chapman of Kenoteq

The technology is still in its early stages but the recycled bricks are to be used in the new Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by the South African architecture studio Counterspace.

https://www.dezeen.com/2020/02/10/serpentine-pavilion-2020-counterspace-recycled-bricks/

Hopefully the K-Briq will be widely used in the UK; currently it is a bespoke product that only a few might be using but as reusing waste becomes more imperative this promises to be part of the solution.

Some more interesting articles about the K-Briq below:

https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/not-just-another-brick-in-the-wall

https://www.dezeen.com/2020/03/02/kenoteq-k-briq-brick-construction-waste/