Recycled Plastic Bricks - Do They Work?
Summary
TLDRThe video explores the potential of recycled plastic bricks as a solution to global housing and pollution issues. It features Circular 11, a company turning plastic waste into bricks. Founders Ben and Connor discuss the process, challenges, and pivot from bricks to outdoor furniture due to technical and commercial risks. The video also includes insights from Rory, the original brick mold designer, who suggests humanitarian applications. The discussion highlights the need for innovation in recycling and sustainable construction materials.
Takeaways
- 🌍 Ben and Connor, co-founders of Circular 11, are tackling global housing and pollution issues by turning plastic waste into recycled bricks.
- 🔥 They were motivated by the harmful practice of open-air burning of plastic waste, which they witnessed during their stay in the Philippines.
- 🏗️ The bricks are created through a process of extrusion, where plastic is pumped into molds, making them stronger than concrete blocks.
- ♻️ Each brick contains about 1.5 kg of plastic, equivalent to roughly 1,000 milk bottle tops, highlighting the scalability of the process.
- 🚿 After molding, bricks are cooled in a water bath for 15-20 minutes before being demolded, ensuring they retain their shape and strength.
- 🏗️ The bricks interlock and can be quickly and easily assembled, making construction faster and more efficient.
- 🔧 Despite their strength, the bricks have limitations such as UV degradation, flammability, and creep, which require solutions like rendering or special framing.
- 🔄 The business has pivoted from producing bricks to creating outdoor furniture and landscaping products due to the technical and commercial risks associated with brick production.
- 🌳 Rory, the original designer of the brick mold, suggests that the best application for these bricks might be in disaster response and popup shelters.
- 🌱 The potential future for recycled plastic bricks lies in local, small-scale production, where waste is turned into construction materials that benefit the community.
Q & A
What is the primary goal of Circular 11's business?
-The primary goal of Circular 11's business is to turn plastic waste into recycled bricks to address global housing and pollution problems.
Why did Ben and Connor start Circular 11?
-Ben and Connor started Circular 11 after experiencing the negative effects of burning plastic waste in the Philippines, which motivated them to find a way to create value from mixed low-grade plastics.
How are the recycled plastic bricks made?
-The recycled plastic bricks are made through a process of extrusion, where plastic is pumped into a mold and then cooled in a water bath to harden.
What is the strength of the recycled plastic bricks compared to traditional concrete blocks?
-The recycled plastic bricks are actually stronger than concrete blocks, as mentioned in the script, they can support a load equivalent to 'a number of elephants'.
What are the challenges associated with the long-term use of recycled plastic bricks?
-The challenges include UV degradation, flammability, and creep (long-term sagging of the material). These can be mitigated with treatments like applying a render to protect from UV damage and using non-flammable renders for fire resistance.
Why did Ben and Connor pivot away from producing bricks?
-They pivoted away from producing bricks because the technical and commercial risks associated with developing a new product from low-grade plastics were too high for their small business.
What is the current focus of Circular 11's business after pivoting?
-After pivoting, Circular 11 now focuses on making outdoor furniture and landscaping products like benches, planters, tables, and fencing from waste plastic.
What is the significance of Rory's involvement in the development of the recycled plastic bricks?
-Rory was the original designer of the brick mold and his insights have been crucial in understanding the potential and limitations of the bricks, including their strength and durability.
What are the potential applications for recycled plastic bricks according to Rory?
-Rory suggests that the strongest application for the bricks is in humanitarian response and disaster relief, such as popup shelters made from waste like water bottles.
What is the current state of the second version of the recycled plastic brick?
-The second version of the recycled plastic brick is still in the early theoretical research stage, with no current funding to push the development further.
Outlines
🌍 Recycled Plastic Bricks: A Solution to Housing and Pollution?
The paragraph introduces the concept of using recycled plastic bricks as a solution to global housing and pollution issues. It discusses the motivation behind Circular 11, a company founded by Ben and Connor, which aims to turn plastic waste into bricks. The founders were inspired by their experience in a waste management project where they witnessed the harmful effects of burning plastic waste. They decided to create a valuable product from mixed low-grade plastics to generate employment and reduce pollution. The process involves extruding plastic into molds to create strong, interlocking bricks that are surprisingly stronger than concrete blocks. The company also addresses challenges such as UV degradation, flammability, and creep, and considers various improvements to the brick design and manufacturing process.
🔄 Recycled Plastic Bricks: Benefits, Limitations, and Business Pivot
This paragraph delves into the benefits and limitations of recycled plastic bricks. It mentions that while the bricks are strong and have potential environmental benefits, there are challenges in scaling up production due to slow manufacturing processes. The founders, Ben and Connor, had to pivot their business model from producing bricks to creating other products like outdoor furniture and landscaping items made from waste plastic. The paragraph also includes an interview with Rory, the original designer of the brick mold, who discusses the potential applications of the bricks, such as disaster response and popup shelters. Rory suggests that the bricks could be part of a larger shift towards local, small-scale production using recycled materials.
🏗️ Exploring the Feasibility of Recycled Plastic Bricks
The paragraph explores the technical aspects of producing recycled plastic bricks, comparing the properties of different plastics like polypropylene and polyethylene with ABS, which is used by Lego. It discusses the challenges of using these materials for construction purposes, such as material shrinkage and the need for safe working temperatures. The paragraph also introduces a new interlocking brick mold that produces smaller bricks suitable for children's play rather than construction. The founders of Circular 11 share their decision to move away from brick production due to the technical and commercial risks associated with using low-grade plastics for a high-value application like bricks. They now focus on producing outdoor furniture and landscaping products from waste plastic, which is a more commercially viable and lower-risk endeavor.
🌳 Supporting Environmental Initiatives: Planet Wild and Community Impact
The final paragraph shifts focus to broader environmental initiatives, highlighting the work of Planet Wild, a community dedicated to environmental restoration projects. It mentions a specific mission to plant 40,000 trees and create forest gardens as a solution to desertification, poverty, and biodiversity loss. The paragraph encourages viewers to support Planet Wild and become active participants in rewilding projects through their app. It also promotes an offer for the first 200 subscribers to get a free month's subscription using a special code. The paragraph concludes by emphasizing the channel's mission to inspire individuals to make a difference in their relationship with waste and the environment.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Recycled Plastic Bricks
💡Circular Economy
💡Extrusion
💡UV Degradation
💡Flammability
💡Creep
💡Injection Molding
💡Pivot
💡Scalability
💡Low-Grade Plastics
💡Planet Wild
Highlights
Recycled plastic bricks could be a solution to global housing and pollution problems.
Circular 11, a company devoted to turning plastic waste into bricks, was born out of a waste management project.
The founders were motivated by the need to stop the burning of plastic waste, which caused health hazards.
The plastic bricks are stronger than concrete blocks due to the extrusion process used in their creation.
Each brick contains about 1.5 kg of plastic, equivalent to 1,000 milk bottle tops.
The bricks have excellent tensile and compressive properties, capable of supporting the weight of several elephants.
The bricks' thermal insulation performance is high, and adding rock wool does not significantly improve it.
Challenges such as UV degradation, flammability, and creep need to be addressed for the bricks to be viable.
The extrusion process is scalable, but the speed of production needs to be increased for commercial viability.
Rory, the original designer of the brick mold, suggests humanitarian response and disaster relief as potential applications.
The brick's potential future includes small-scale product design, furniture, and architecture.
Circular 11 pivoted to making outdoor furniture and landscaping products from waste plastic due to commercial risks.
There is ongoing research into a version two of the brick that could allow for quicker and more efficient production.
The vision for the future includes small to medium recycling centers making construction materials from local waste.
Planet wild is a community dedicated to environmental missions, including planting trees and restoring forests.
The video concludes with a call to action to support Planet wild and make a difference through rewilding projects.
Transcripts
are recycled plastic bricks a solution
to the global housing and pollution
problems now this is a pretty big
question to answer all by ourselves
fortunately some friends of ours set up
a whole business devoted to Turning
plastic waste into recycled bricks to
try and solve those exact issues so
let's go and find out from the people
that actually make them then we'll come
back here and see if we can do something
similar
ourselves so these are our friends Ben
and Connor who are the co-founders of
their company circular 11 which was or
formed as green brick it came out of a
waste management project in the pool
where we were in early 2020 setting up
collection systems and we would go to
bed each night with a smell of burning
plastic in our nostrils because all of
the families we lived with had to openly
burn the plastic that they um used every
day and we really got mobilized by our
experience there CU we thought if
something valuable could be made out of
all of these mixed low-grade Plastics it
would generate employment and most
importantly it would stop this like
carcinogenic smoke from surrounding in
these families every day so we came back
to UK found out about Rory's molds and
all of the bricks that we wanted to kind
of experiment with as a starting point
for Innovation um and that's where green
brick came from so here we have the
plastic bricks in action now we actually
us to make these in our Workshop back in
Hovis in our much smaller scale sort of
setup the basic principle of these is
that they lock together um and that
they're super quick and easy to attach
um and to build with super super strong
these actually are stronger than a
concrete block believe it or not and the
way that we do this is through process
of Extrusion pumping it into into the
mold so this is the mold for this
particular
brick top pops off and out there would
pop One of These Bricks now there's
about a kilo and a half of plastic in
this particular brick which is around
about 1,000 milk bow tops um so yeah
super super scalable and in fact let's
go over to the extruder and take a look
at
that so this is the extruder that they
use they load the plastic at the top
here feed it through the barrel and into
the mold at the other end and if any of
you have seen any of our other videos
you might know that this is just a
little bit bigger than our extruder back
in our
[Music]
Workshop so once the mold is finished um
and full we're going to take it off the
extruder and pop it into our water bath
so it can cool down and we can release
the plastic brick from
inside so leave it in the water bath for
about 15 20 minutes um in order to cool
down now it's ready to demold so we can
take the mold grips off and get this uh
brick
[Music]
out
[Music]
nice so it's a bit soggy but other than
that it feels like it's a really strong
brick yeah it's a great process the
quickest we've got it down to is about 6
minutes which isn't too bad I think the
essential parts of the process are
fairly scalable it's strong compared to
like normal normal construction bricks
it's amazing the tensile and compressive
properties of that are unbelievable you
can put a number of elephants on it a
number of elephants yeah it will take a
good few tons to break it nice the
properties are great as well we can put
rock wall in it to insulate it andap
doesn't even improve the thermal
insulation performance that much cuz
it's already very high really well the
three things that people always talk
about uh UV degradation flammability and
creep which is like the long-term
sagging of the material over time the
first two can in principle be overcome
with UV degradation if you apply a
render over the top of it the UV damage
won't occur to the brick and when it
comes to flammability you can can often
help the uh building lasts a lot longer
in fire by rendering it with the
non-flammable render creep is a little
bit more challenging because people
don't understand it very well there
isn't very much regulation in place for
exactly how this material should
function in 30 or 40 years time in
principle you can imagine taking the
load off the wall by Framing it with
something like an aluminium scaffold
there are ways that we could try and
design this out as well you know there
were few other areas as well in which um
we'd look to change the sort of vertical
connection piece with the bricks there
is nonone currently so you lose a lot of
structural Integrity um and also the
sort of Clips on the top which keep it
horizontally locked um they can be a
little fiddly and also prone to to
failure so again something a little bit
more sort of structurally sound um needs
to be designed in in that area also
things to consider is the way in which
the brick sort of works with services in
the the building so how it connects the
foundations for example or window
lentils bringing it into a real world
construction context is you really
really crucial fundamentally sort of we
need to improve how efficient it is to
make because it is quite slow to make on
mass and it it sort of used as an
extrusion process in an injection style
mold so you need to look at ways in
which that can be sped up to basically
make it commercially viable cool cheers
boys so these bricks have a load of
benefits and it seems like they've got
the potential to be even better but
ultimately their limitations are the
reason that Ben and Connor had to Pivot
and change the direction of their
business we'll come back to Connor and
Ben later and we see what they're up to
now instead of the bricks and while
recycled plastic bricks have the
potential to combat both environmental
and economic issues there are some more
natural approaches that may be able to
help as well make sure you stick around
to the end as we've got an awesome video
recommendation which does exactly that
as well as a little gift that we think
you're going to love so so the guys
mentioned that it was actually Rory who
was the original designer of their brick
mold now B eyed viewers might remember
him from our recycle plastic brick
video hey guys I amazing information
thank you so much Rory so let's go have
a chat with him and get his take on
recycled plastic bricks after all the
work he did on them hey man thank you so
much for jumping on to call with us so
we know that you made a video yourself
all about the recycled plastic brick uh
when you designed it a few years ago
which of course we will link below just
for anyone that hasn't seen it but since
then has any new information come to
light that has changed anything for you
at all that YouTube video was how we got
the research paper done with a German
University and they did a research on
the durability and the feasibility of
implementing the current design and
that's a really interesting paper and
that's actually where they highlight the
strength is so good but then the
weakness is that it's extremely flam
so you know you got this tra and in the
sun it just degrades much quicker than
you would expect right so with that in
mind what do you think is the best
application for these breaks I think the
strongest place is you know humanitarian
response Disaster Response popup
shelters made from humanitarian Aid such
as water bottles and stuff like that to
create this very quick kind of you ship
in a shipping container with a solution
and then everyone kind of puts that
plastic in it and out comes products
that provide shelter and address those
needs so overall all these years later
what are your thoughts now is there an
actual future for the brick do you
reckon or is it more just a a nice
concept I yeah I still think there's a
lot of potential for it it's just you
know the world in my mind we all just
start looking at the things and I think
the brick has an opportunity there I
think it goes from small scale product
design to Furniture to architecture and
I think we want to get to the point
where you know Ikea is taking the waste
from the plastic of the community to
create the furniture in its Factory
that's in the village to then sell that
back and then the next scale is
flatpacked houses that are made from the
waste of that community that then get
put back into the community and I think
this kind of small local business is
where we're evolving but perhaps it's 10
years away and requires a ton of
experimentation a ton of investment and
for some rules in the government to
change but I think that's you know the
brick was perhaps a little ahead of its
time so you're a recycling hster
essentially then
really you guys are the ones with the
beards and if you look at the stuff that
you guys make then it's always very much
about the Small Things the small things
that actually bring so much value to
that few grams of plastic and perhaps
that has a larger capacity to create to
generate more change than just saying
let's use 400 tons of of plastic in this
one house when actually you know Clay is
a really good building material that's
carbon neutral and Source locally as
well all right well thank you so much
for your time bud that was super helpful
as always but we'll let you get back to
it we'll see you
soon it is always ridiculously helpful
challenge Rory CU he seems to know
everything about anything in the world
of plastic so if you want to see the
full interview because that was only a
2minute cutdown version but if you want
to see the full one it is live over on
our patreon on so if you're a member of
the Brotherhood you can check it out now
or if you're fancy signing up you could
see the full version there's also some
other benefits that comes with it you
get your name on our Workshop wall we
hang out on Zoom sometimes there's a
bunch of things so check out if you're
interested if not no pressure so it
seems like in its current format These
Bricks aren't really that viable to be
produced on a large scale but as R said
injection molding is an awesome
application for producing a lot of
smaller items and if you get down to a
much smaller
scale that's exactly how Lego is
made now Lego bricks are made from ABS
but in our machines we use polypropylene
or polyethylene and this is because
these are the safest Plastics to work
with when working at temperature now
Lego does use these materials but not
for their bricks either because the
material shrinks too much or it just
doesn't have the right properties for a
strong stackable brick now we don't work
we don't work with abs because the fumes
when you melt them are pretty hideous so
we like to stick to just the safe
Plastics which kind of means that a
brick of this size isn't going to be
particularly feasible with our setup at
least anyway so maybe we can find
something somewhere in the middle well
we've recently got this interlocking
brick mold which sits right between the
size of the large brick and the piece of
Lego this will be the very first time
we've ever used it so let's go give it a
go and see if it
[Music]
works
[Music]
so we spent about 3 or 4 hours making
these bricks and in terms of quality
they are super consistent which is kind
of what you'd expect with injection
molding over Extrusion in terms of how
long they take to make we're kind of
working at the same Pace as these ones
so it's about 6 minutes per brick so
about 10 per hour however the main
limitation is the size if you're trying
to get these comparable you're going to
need about 12 of these to equal one of
these larger Bricks now obviously these
aren't meant for construction purposes
but in terms of kids stacking blocks
they're
perfect
[Music]
so all in all are recycled plastic
bricks feasible theoretically yes but
not quite as it stands the design of the
mold definitely needs some work it needs
to be easier to make it needs to be
quicker to make and ideally it needs to
be able to be made like in an
automated system where it's not like one
person undoing a every time we just need
we need somewhere that's going to bash
it out super quickly and make loads of
them when we were Ching to Rory he said
that he quickly realized that even if
the mold was absolutely perfect that
it's not really that much of a viable
option at the moment anyway just because
there aren't that many workspaces out
there that are capable of making these
recycled plastic bricks of this size Ben
and Connor actually have the ideal setup
to make these type of bricks on this
kind of scale but even they have decided
to Pivot away from this and they've
decided to switch their business into
making something else ultimately we
moved away from producing bricks in
circular 11 and that wasn't because it's
impossible to make them our core aim is
to use mixed low-grade Plastics that
currently go to incineration and that
means that we're really interested in
how to do stuff with the lowest quality
Plastics this is a really high value
application and you need to be really
careful with what feed stock you put
into a process that goes into something
like bricks at the end of the day
there's a lot of technical risk that
we're already taking uh by developing
manufacturing technology for low-grade
Plastics when you add in the commercial
risk of making a product that no one's
heard of before there's way too much
risk to manage in a small business so we
decided to focus on a much simpler end
product that's already in demand things
like low carbon fencing and planks we
now make a range of outdoor furniture
and landscaping products things like
benches Planters tables uh and are soon
launching into a fencing range as well
and these are all made out of waste
plastic from local communities and also
at the back end of recycling centers
taking the waste that they can't deal
with um and turn it into products that
will set to last a lifetime CYO 11 are
continually doing loads of research and
developing new stuff so we'll put all
the links in the description below so if
you want to follow and see what they're
getting up to you can do
so it's fun isn't
it there has been a small amount of work
done on a version two of this brick that
should allow for them to be made quicker
more efficiently be good but it's only
at a very early sort of theoretical
research level however there's currently
no more funding left in place to push
this any further forward so if there is
any money out there then it could
definitely be something that's possible
in the future and then if that was
possible then perhaps one day there'll
be a world where there's loads of little
small to medium recycling centers all
over that they taking plastic from their
local community and making you know
construction materials and putting that
back into the community to do good that'
be fun wouldn't be a nice place to live
yes one day we'll get there our channel
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