Blue large recycled HDPE brick

A blue coloured, recycled, HDPE (high density polyethylene) building brick, designed and manufactured by Greenbrick, a Dorset based start-up. The company was set up during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown to address the problems of plastics waste in developing countries and a lack of suitable, affordable housing in those local communities. The two founding members met in Nepal and were forced to return to the UK due to the pandemic. They set up their workshop in an old Hovis van, parked at a rural farm, where they are developing a slot together style brick system that will be designed so that it can be produced in high volumes by small-scale factories. Once perfected, they aim to set up workshops in Zimbabwe and Mozambique to teach local people how to use their technology. Using the open source network, Precious Plastic, they were able to acquire their first moulds to produce this prototype brick and they recruited a design engineer to refine and test both the design and moulds. Currently recycling 600kg plastics material each day, the company expect to be using 1-2 tonnes with new machinery. Their manufacturing process involves cleaning, drying and shredding the raw material before placing the plastics into an extruder, where it melts and gets forced into the mould. When full, the extruder is stopped and another mould is put into place for the process to start again. The brick is knocked out of the mould when cool enough to handle and then hand finished. Taking 7-8 minutes, Greenbrick are working towards an industrial production turn around of 1-2 minutes.

AIBDC : 008795.3