Pirate's Cove

Strangely, there’s no condemnation of all the “protesters” using bricks to destroy property early in the latest incident of BLM, eh?

We’ve been using the same bricks for over 5,000 years. This engineer says it’s time for a change.

climate change joke

Although we’re surrounded by millions of them every day, most of us don’t think about bricks too often. For thousands of years, the humble clay-fired brick hasn’t changed. The building blocks of modern suburban homes would be familiar to the city planners of ancient Babylon, the bricklayers of the Great Wall of China, or the builders of Moscow’s Saint Basil’s Cathedral.

But the brick as we know it causes significant environmental problems, by using up raw, finite materials and creating carbon emissions. That’s why Gabriela Medero, a professor of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering at Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University, decided to reinvent it.

Originally from Brazil, Medero says she was drawn to civil engineering because it gave her passion for maths and physics a practical outlet. As she became aware of the construction industry’s sustainability issues, she started looking for solutions. With her university’s support, Medero joined forces with fellow engineer Sam Chapman and founded Kenoteq in 2009. (snip)

Although they’re made from natural materials, there are problems with bricks at every step of their production.

Bricks are made from clay — a type of soil found all over the world. Clay mining strips the land’s fertile topsoil, inhibiting plant growth.

Once made, bricks must be transported to construction sites, generating more carbon emissions.

Interestingly, most of these same climate cultists aren’t complaining about all the precious metals and such being mined and transported to make their precious solar panels, which provide power sporadically.

Enter the K-Briq. To make it, construction and demolition waste including bricks, gravel, sand and plasterboard is crushed and mixed with water and a binder. The bricks are then pressed in customized molds. Tinted with recycled pigments, they can be made in any color.

But, they aren’t really new. They’re just recycled bricks. Which, let’s admit, is good, because reusing bricks wasn’t really a thing. But, it still uses lots of water, and still requires transportation to construction sites. And what happens when they run out of old style bricks? What then?

Medero should be congratulated for finding a way to recycle the bricks, but, really, was it necessary to drag the climate crisis (scam) into the mix?