Brick Additives

Across the Global South, post-consumer waste glass is an often dumped, and under-utilised resource. Even in Malawi, with widespread return schemes, many barriers exist, inhibiting reuse, and necessitating appropriate solutions. We evaluated the performance of post-consumer waste glass as a coarse aggregate within burnt clay bricks, and assessed the feasibility for the recovery of this waste material from dumped stocks within Chembe: the most visited lakeside resort town in Malawi. Our results suggest that waste glass can function as a performance enhancer, with positive effects on compressive strength observed at up to 10% crushed waste glass content. These findings support existing literature on glass waste additions, yet show that optimal results can also be had with post-consumer waste glass and in low income, and less technology-reliant contexts. Moreover, our findings suggest that current above-ground stocks of waste glass are sufficient to support the production of hybrid building materials for decades, however further innovation is necessary in order to achieve a sustainable mode of practice.

Ongoing work is examining how the local, clay bricks in Chembe are burned and how the use of biomass can be reduced through improved shaping and stacking configurations.