Bricks produced in Scotland approved for use in construction projects

Bricks produced in East Lothian from recycled building material have been given approval for use in construction projects in the UK and US.

The K-Briq, manufactured close to North Berwick by the firm Kenoteq, is made up of waste such as gravel, mortar and plasterboard.

Kenoteq says the carbon footprint for making the product significantly less than using clay.

The brick contains under 20g of CO2e per unit and requires no firing – the process o heating clay to extremely high temperatures.

The process to transform a pile of rubble into a number of recycled bricks can be completed within 24 hors, which is two to three times faster than traditional methods.

Now with full certification from the British Board of Agrément, the firm is preparing to increase production to roughly two million bricks a year.

Co-founder Dr Sam Chapman told STV News: “We use recycled aggregates and recycled construction, demolition and excavation waste to make a really ultra-low carbon product.

“We also don’t fire them with high fossil fuel usage like your traditional clay fired bricks.”

The project emerged from research involving Dr Chapman at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh over a decade ago.

The aim was to find a way to reduce the amount of items from the constriction industry that ends up in a landfill – estimated to be more than a third of all landfill content globally.

It has taken since then to perfect the concept and finally have it approved for wide-scale usage.

With the industry searching for ways to become more eco-friendly, Kenoteq anticipates demand will spike.

“The UK uses two-and-a-half billion bricks a year,” said Dr Chapman.

“We’re a small drop in the ocean at the moment, and this is the start of a great journey.”

But the hope is that what has been accomplished at a small factory in East Lothian can inspire others in the sector.

Business development manager Lucy Black said: “We are all about education and really changing the vocabulary of waste.

“Waste is often seen as something quite negative when actually it can be turned into a high value product.

“We are one of the few companies that as opposed to just treating the symptoms we are going right to the root cause of the problem.”