Eco Build: An innovative manufacturing system for sustainable red brick

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Eco Build: An innovative manufacturing system for sustainable red brick

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Ecobuild aims to be the first carbon neutral manufacturer of red brick in Malawi. Today Ecobuild has the only Vertical Shaft Brick Kiln in the country, which uses 10% of the energy of the traditional, artisanal brick manufacturing methods, and once at scale the plan is to switch from coal to charred agricultural waste to eliminate the last 10% of emissions.

The Problem

Malawi’s primary building material is red brick, with 1.7 billion bricks manufactured and sold per year, most produced by artisans using firewood and inefficient kilns, an unsustainable practice in a country nearly deforested.

The Solution

EcoBuild makes red bricks with a Vertical Shaft Brick Kiln, an innovative method for brick manufacturing, a technology originally invented in India, developed to produce standard clay "red" bricks using 60% less fuel than the common techniques and 90% less energy than the artisan brick manufacturers in Malawi. To make this process more sustainable, EcoBuild is testing the use of charred agricultural waste as a fuel source in our kilns which is key in Malawi as seasonal floods have gotten more destructive over recent years to a large degree due to deforestation. We have achieved proof of concept with our prototype kiln producing 3,000 bricks per day, or just under 2million bricks per annum