Scottish Start-up Kenoteq makes eco-friendly bricks entirely out of construction waste

Urbanization has been perhaps the greatest contributor to the growing carbon footprint plaguing the environment today. While innovative methods are being devised to make homes and buildings smarter and more efficient than before, the increased use of building materials and the linked carbon footprint of these construction materials is still something that needs attention.

Traditional clay bricks, owing to their process of manufacture, trap great amounts of heat energy within them. Since these are made in the kiln at temperatures exceeding 2000-degree Fahrenheit using fossil fuels, the entire process as well as the finished product both take up a lot of energy.

Scottish start-up, Kenoteq, has addressed this energy emission issue that traditional building bricks pose with the development and launch of a more sustainable alternative called K-Briqs to the traditional clay bricks. Made of about 90% recycled construction waste and demolition debrislike concrete, bricks and plasterboard, K-Briqs are manufactured without the use of fire. The waste ingredients are mixed with a secret binder and then compressed within customized moulds. This in turn brings down the carbon footprint quotient of these bricks to almost one-tenth of the regular ones.

Brainchild of engineering professor and the Chief Scientific Officer of Kenoteq, Gabriela Medero, these bricks offer an eco-friendly and durable substitute to their regular counterparts. Driven by the desire to reduce the environmental deterioration brought about by the modern construction industry, Medero spent over 10 years researching construction materials and their impact on the environment and exploring newer techniques of exploiting existing raw materials to produce sustainable, long-term materials with low carbon emissions.

With the objective of constructing climate-friendly buildings, Medero co-founded Kenoteq to commercially produce these sustainable bricks. K-Briqsare currently being produced at a waste and recycling facility at Edinburgh, Scotland. These environmental-friendly bricks look exactly like normal clay bricks, but are stronger, lighter and come with better insulation properties. Available in different colors, the K-Briqs can be adopted as a sustainable building material to create unique architectural designs. K-Briq has already found success and is being used to build the Serpentine Pavilion, designed by Counterspace, a South African architecture studio.

Kenoteq’s K-Briqs are a sure step towards sustainability.