After years in development, Mobile Crisis Construction's (MCC) first portable brick factory is headed where it's needed, turning rubble into Lego-like bricks for areas in distress.
The Australia-based company has fitted a 20-foot shipping container with the tools needed to turn remnants of former buildings, along with waste materials, into building blocks that fit together without needing mortar, as New Atlas reported.
In this instance, it's headed to Ukraine to help the war-torn nation get back on its feet, reusing what's left of previous structures to help residents build new ones. Once deployed to the site, a freestanding hammermill will crush materials into a fine powder, which is then fed into brick molds to be formed and pressed.
After a seven-day period of curing and hardening, the modular bricks can be used for construction, as the report noted, although they reach full strength in 28 days. They've been named LayGo bricks as a nod to the famous interlocking toy company Lego.
The company offers global deployment of the LayGo portable factory, which can produce around 8,000 bricks daily in a variety of sizes and shapes. As New Atlas notes, that daily output is enough to help rebuild a school, three large houses, or a connected 10-unit structure in a week.
Since they're recycled from existing materials, the bricks will avoid the production of new concrete (though a small amount of cement and water is needed for the bricks, per New Atlas). This is good news for the environment since concrete manufacturing produces around 7-8% of the world's carbon pollution. Cement is only 10-15% of the material's makeup, per the Natural Resources Defense Council, but producing it accounts for 90% of concrete processing's planet-warming output.
MCC's product isn't just for areas in conflict. It's also for communities suffering the impacts of extreme weather as a result of the changing climate.
University of Michigan's environmental dean, Jonathan Overpeck, shared some hard facts with PBS, indicating that we may be in for more tough times by the end of the year, driven by rising global temperatures.
"Given that we've seen an unprecedented jump in global warmth over the last 11 months, it is not surprising to see worsening climate extremes so early in the year. If this record pace of warming continues, 2024 will likely be a record year of climate disasters."
Luckily, the recycled LayGo products are said to be earthquake-, fire-, and cyclone-resistant and have slots for rebar to help further reinforce structures, per the report.
Plans are being implemented around the world to reduce planet-warming pollution and its deleterious results, but we still have to deal with the repercussions. Clean energy investment has risen by more than 70% from 2022 to 2023, according to the International Energy Agency, and adoption of renewables is on the rise.
Other companies are also working to reshape building materials, making them more resilient, sustainable, and cheaper. Lego bricks continue to be a big influence, inspiring a variety of greener building blocks, from recycled glass and plastic versions to heavily insulated wood.
If you're interested in supporting MCC's humanitarian efforts, it's an Australian Registered Charity and accepts donations through its website.
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