Houses made of waste

Some engineers are more ambitious than others. Two UK engineers plan to replace the 350 million concrete blocks manufactured in the UK each year by blocks made almost entirely of waste materials such as crushed glass, pulverized fuel ash, and bitumen, a by-product of the petrochemical industry. The 'Bitublocks' are about six times stronger as concrete and will not be more expensive. These eco-friendly materials should become available in about three to five years, but a house prototype should be available soon.

This new material would be beneficial to the environment for two reasons. First, there will be no need for cement which generates huge amounts of carbon dioxide. And there will be no more needs to use energy to burn millions tons of waste into incinerators.

Below is a picture of a Bitublock, a construction unit composed of recycled waste materials and bituminous binders (Credit: John Forth, University of Leeds).

This project is the brainchild of civil engineer Dr John Forth from University of Leeds and of Dr Salah Zoorob from the University of Nottingham. Their research has been funded by a £280K grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.