Bricks. “Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins” (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe). The humble brick has been the backbone of human enterprise for millennia, from the Pyramids of Giza to the homes we live in today. Simple, unremarkable, anonymous yet utterly indispensable to the world as we know it, from rural shacks to the Champs- Élysées. Yet, in spite of exponential innovation witnessed in the fields of architecture and construction, how we make bricks and what we make them with has not fundamentally changed for centuries. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” (Thomas Betram Lance). The voracious consumption of finite raw materials ripped out of the planet and the millions of tonnes of carbon emissions pumped into our atmosphere to produce man’s best (inanimate) friend is something we seem to have either accepted as a necessary evil or, worse, been wilfully ignorant of. “Out of sight, out of mind.” (Unknown). How many of us ever stopped mid-stride during the daily grind to wonder what the bricks under our feet were actually made of? Or where they came from? Or the environmental and ecological damage inflicted by their production? More to the point, how many of us actually care? They’re just bricks, right? Plastic. “Life in plastic, it’s fantastic” (Barbie). Only 70 years old as a marvel of industrial innovation, yet can rightfully claim its place alongside the humble brick as the backbone of human enterprise. Its ubiquity, utility and sheer breadth of application is truly peerless. An update to Maslow’s formulation might justifiably see plastic sitting just above water, air and food in the hierarchy of human needs. However… The voracious consumption of finite raw materials ripped out of the planet and the millions of tonnes of carbon emissions pumped into our atmosphere to produce man’s best (inanimate) friend is something we seem to have either accepted as a necessary evil or, worse, been wilfully ignorant of. “Out of sight, out of mind.” (Unknown). How many of us ever stopped mid-stride during the daily grind to wonder what the bricks under our feet were Coca Cola bottle in our hand was actually made of? Or where it came from? Or the environmental and ecological damage inflicted by its production? More to the point, how many of us actually care? It’s just a bottle, right? Sound familiar? Plastic can lay claim to some impressive statistics, such as a c.23,000% growth rate (1950-2019), as it rapidly became indispensable to modern society, as well as the bottom line of the caring and conscientious petrochemical industry. That’s a mind-boggling 9,491,903,641 tons of plastic. The not-so-impressive statistics? Assuming a (very generous) 10% average recycling rate, that’s 8,542,713,277 tons of plastic waste generation. Even the aspirational 10% will inevitably become waste. The really scary statistic? The nice petrochemical people are tripling down on plastic production. Yes, that’s right. Plastic production is now the industry’s golden goose and forecast to increase by up to 3x by mid-century. Plastic recycling rates, on the other hand, are forecast to increase by…*tumbleweed, awkward shuffle, avoid eye contact* EcoBricks. The raison d’etre for EcoBricks was to break the Perspex ceiling of plastic recycling. Plastic is a wonder material. The fundamental issue has always been that recycling and re-use was rarely, if ever, in its design brief. That has been left to the downstream stakeholders holding the Evian bottle to worry about. This ‘it’s your problem now’ linear model has prevailed since the first monomers were strung together. Plastic was manufactured, money was made, the waste was thrown away. Except, there is no ‘away’. That first bit of plastic ever made and every piece ever since is still out there somewhere, in some form. Leaching its toxic soup of chemicals into our soil and water, killing wildlife, accelerating climate change, sitting in our lungs and vital organs, floating around in our bloodstream and being passed from mother to foetus. But what if? What if we could find a long-term use for this apocalyptic ‘waste’ a.k.a. raw material in innovation parlance? What if we could use it to reduce the consumption of raw materials, carbon emissions and environmental harm caused by another material that humanity simply cannot do without and is consuming at record levels? What if we could turn this into a financially viable business that could make money, do good and inspire people? Those ‘what ifs’ evolved into the building blocks (pun intended) of EcoBricks. The fundamental premise of our solution was to turn the greatest waste burden on this planet into a raw material for the world’s most consumed man-made material. “Big problems require big solutions.” (Me) EcoBricks has developed a concrete material that utilises waste that no one else recycles. This not only avoids the aforementioned harms but for every ton of plastic waste diverted from incineration, we save 2-3 tons of carbon emissions. Put another way, for every 1sqm of EcoBricks used, we save 32kg of CO2e - that’s more than a tree sequesters in an entire year. But it’s not a competition. Plant trees wherever possible but where you need paving, use EcoBricks! Our entire business model is local and circular: we use local Hong Kong waste, we manufacture locally in Hong Kong (much harder done than said) and we sell our bricks for local projects. Unlike plastics, recycling and re-use was a mandatory part of our design brief. At end-of-life, we can recycle 100% of our materials in-house. This circular model creates an important and powerful nexus between actions and results, cause and effect, company and community. We did not seek to reinvent the wheel. Concrete is a wonder material. Simple, cheap, reliable. What we sought to do was find a solution for its pain points. Our products are concrete, just more sustainable. They are tested and certified to the same standards as conventional products. They look the same, feel the same, perform the same and, perhaps most importantly, cost the same. In a world all too obsessed with complex advanced technologies, it is easy to forget that sometimes simplicity is the key. “Keep it simple, stupid!” (Clarence “Kelly” Johnson).