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FABRIC WASTE  April 15, 2015

9 building materials made entirely from waste products


By CityMetric staff

No doubt an architectural treasure trove. Image: Cezary p at Wikimedia Commons.

Building with Waste,


Waste, a new book about, well, you can guess, may not sound like it should top
your holiday reading list – but, construction geeks as we are, we found its premise fascinating.
Every year, human settlements produce 1.3bn tonnes worth of solid waste products. The book
argues that we could and should be putting this to good use as cheap, durable and green
building materials. 

Compilers Dirk E. Hebel, Marta H. Wisniewska and Felix Heise looked into the worlds of
architecture, construction, and the delightfully named eld of "garbology" to nd new and
exciting materials made out of stu you'd normally nd at a land ll site. Their book argues
that, in future, we could end up re-using pretty much everything, as we did back when all waste
was organic.
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This could come in handy if, as is predicted, our municipal waste output doubles by 2025. As
Mitchell Joachim, one of the book's contributors, puts it:

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The future city makes no distinction between waste and supply. 

So, from animal blood bricks to nappy roo ng, here are our favourite waste-based materials
featured in the book. 

1. NewspaperWood
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Image: ViJ5.

This design comes froom Norway, where over 1m tonnes of paper and cardboard are recycled
every year. The wood is created by rolling up paper and solvent-free glue to create something
not dissimilar to a log, then chopping it into usable planks. The wood can then be sealed so it's
waterproof and ame-retardant, and used to build anything you would normally build with
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wood. 

2. Nappy roofing
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Image: Lightweight tiles ltd.

Good news: something can be salvaged from all those nappies and sanitary products we throw
away, even though they're, well, really gross. Special recycling plants separate out the
polymers from the, er, organic waste, and these polymers can then be used to ceate bre-based
construction materials like the tiles in the image above. 

3. Recy blocks

Image: Gert de Mulder. 

These colourful bricks are made from old plastic bags, which are notoriously di cult to recycle
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in any other way. Recycled bags or plastic packaging are placed in a heat mold, and forced
together to form the blocks. They're too lightweight to act as load-bearing walls, but can be
used to divide up rooms or outdoor areas. 
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4. Blood Brick

Image: Jack Munro.

This idea rests on the assumption that animal blood counts as a waste product. This, we realise,
is a potentially o ensive idea – but while carnivores are still munching away, they're still
wasting loads of animal blood, especially in societies without industrialised food production
systems. And, as it turns out, blood is one of the strongest bio-adhesives out there, as it
contains high levels of protein. 
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British architecture student Jack Munro proposes using freeze-dried blood (which comes as a a
powder), mixed with sand to form a paste; this can then be cast as bricks. This could be
especially useful in remote communities, where blood from animal slaughter is plentiful, but
strong construction materials are thin on the ground.

5. Bottle bricks 

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Image: Aaron "tango" Tang via Flickr. 

This proposal is a little di erent, as it relies on producing a consumer good speci cally so it can
later be used as a building material. Lots of companies now make bottles in cuboid or other
tesselative shapes, to make them easier to transport.

But the practice of doing so to create construction materials actually started with beer company
Heineken in the 1960s – Alfred Henry Heineken, owner of the brewery, visited a Carribean
island and was dismayed at both lack of shelter, and the number of discarded Heineken bottles
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scattered everywhere. So the company landed on a new, brick-shaped design for the bottle,
shown in the images above. The bottleneck slots into the base of the next bottle, forming an
interlocking line. 
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6. Smog insulators
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Image: New Terrirories/City of Bangkok.

One of our biggest waste receptacles is the air, which isn't great for our lungs, or for the human
race's chances of survival on a planet that's rapidly getting hotter. "Dustyrelief", a system
created by the City of Bangkok and design rm New-Territories, involves placing an electrically
charged metal mesh over a building, which attracts large smog particles and sticks them
together. Eventually, this creates a kind of silvery fur over the building's surface. Not S
particularly attractive, perhaps, but much better than a similar shag forming on the insides of
your lungs.

7. Mushroom walls

Image: Evocative designs.


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Here, designers gured out a way to grow wall insulator and packing materials using
mycelium, a bacteria found in rotting organisms like tree trunks and agricultural byproducts. If
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placed in a mold, these organic matters grow to the desired shape within a couple of days, and
can then be stopped using a hot oven. This is particularly useful because traditional insulating
and packing materials tend to be non-biodegradable, or, in the case of asbestos, poisonous.

8. Plasphalt 

The bit on the left is plasphalt, the bit on the right is asphalt. Image: TEWA.
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OK, yes, we mostly like this one for its fun name. Plasphalt is made up of grains of plastic
produced from unsorted plastic waste, which replaces the sand and gravel traditionally used in
asphalt production. In testing, it was found that plasphalt roads were far less vulnerable to
wear and tear than traditional asphalt, because the asphalt emulsion bonded better with the
plastic than with gravel or sand.

9. Wine cork panels

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Image: Yemm & Hart materials.

These wall or oor tiles are made by combining recycled granulated cork with whole wine
corks, which you can see as those oblong shapes in the tiles above. This is a pretty useful idea,
considering the world apparently consumes around 31.7bn bottles of wine a year. For shame. S

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TRANSPORT TAXIS  November 25, 2019


Seven thoughts on TfL’s decision to suspend of Uber’s licence to operate cabs in
London, again
By Jonn Elledge

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No more? Image: Getty.

Well. Here we go again. Two years and two months ago,


ago, Transport for London (TfL) told Uber –
the minicab rm that has ba ing managed to convince the world that it’s a tech company –
that it was not a t and proper company to provide private car services in London. Uber
squawked, right-leaning commentators railed against Sadiq Khan for being anti-business,
users fretted that they were about to be deprived of a service they found useful…

...and then, so far as the average Londoner was concerned, nothing happened. Despite its
threats to take its ball away, Uber ultimately didn’t do anything of the sort. Instead, it appealed
the decision, quietly improved its performance in those areas in which TfL said it had been
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lacking, and then kept its licence. Uber never disappeared from the streets of London. The
company, in short, blinked.

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And now history is repeating. The company was granted two extensions to its licence, the most
recent of which expired yesterday. But once again, TfL has ruled that Uber is not a t and
proper company to operate minicabs, pointing to a “pattern of failures” which place
passengers at risk, and has said it will not be renewing its licence.
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The company can now appeal the decision, and keep operating cabs while it does so. What does
all this mean? Some thoughts.
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1. The problems now are not the problems then

In September 2017, TfL’s statement credited its decision to revoke Uber’s licence to three
factors: how the company reported criminal o ences by its drivers; how it conducted medical
and other checks on them; and how it used a piece of software called Greyball to prevent
o cials from accessing its data.

None of those feature in the list of problems cited by TfL today. Instead, it points to a problem
in which Uber’s system allowed unauthorised drivers to upload their photos to other drivers’
accounts. This had led to 14,000 trips conducted by unlicenced drivers, which meant they were
uninsured. At least one of these drivers had previously had their licenced revoked by TfL. Other
problems concerned vehicles without the correct insurance, or the ability of “dismisssed otr
suspended drivers” to simply create a new accoutn and keep Uber-ing. (The whiny tweet from
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi about how unfair this all is doesn’t even acknowledge any of these
very, very bad problems.)

So: even though Uber has acted to address earlier problems, new ones have reared their heads.

2. ...but the song remains the same

But, as in 2017, those problems re ect two big themes: passenger safety, and an apparent lack
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of respect for TfL’s role as regulator.

And this is, to be blunt, exactly what happened before. TfL is using its regulatory muscle to tell
Uber it either needs to raise its game or get out of town. Uber has said it will appeal.

Last time, the courts pretty much took TfL’s side, and put Uber on probation while it worked to
correct the problems. Its possible things will play out di erently this time – but whatever
happens...

3. Londoners won’t notice any change

Check the Uber app on your phone right now. There are still cabs there, aren’t there? For all the
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noise, if you use the rm’s cabs, the odds are you’ll still be able to use them while the rm
appeals the decision.

In fact, you’ll probably be able to keep using them for a long time beyond that, because... S

4. Uber will not want to withdraw from London

The company has pulled out of other cities before, in protest at the fact regulators and
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municipal governments had the gall to imagine it was in some way answerable to them. Some
of those markets – like Austin, Texas,
Texas, in 2016 – were relatively small. Some of them – like
Barcelona,, last January – were much bigger.
Barcelona
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But London, with apologies to readers in the rest of the country, is di erent. Documents led
with the US Securities & Exchange Commission last April showed that nearly a quarter of the
rm’s business happened in just ve cities: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, and
São Paulo. That tallies with long-standing rumours that London is one of the few places where
the rm is actually pro table, rather than just burning through investors’ money while it tries
to build a dominant market share.

So: my instinct is that even if the courts again side with TfL, Uber will simply grumble and do
what it’s told, rather than actually pull out.

5. The right is still wrong – or at least looking at this the wrong way

Another way in which history is repeating: right-leaning commentators are in a ap that this
shows that Sadiq Khan hates private enterprise, London is closed for business, and a load of
other annoying nonsense.

It’s rubbish, sorry: this is exactly how regulation should work. An operator isn’t safe enough,
so the regulator has revoked its licence. If the operator improves, it can keep its licence. Great! S
If the operator doesn’t improve, we’re better o without it. Fantastic! Either way, the consumer
wins. This decision isn’t about being against business: it’s about being anti-bad
anti-bad business.

6. “But minicabs are often unsafe!” is not a killer argument

Sure, minicab rms are often not great on the driver safety front either. My own personal
horror story: the one that had been driving me to Heathrow along the M4 for several minutes
before I realised he was watching the cricket on his iPad rather than, for example, the road.

But that is an argument for regulating minicabs more, not one for regulating Uber less. One of
the advantages of Uber swallowing a big share of the private hire market is that it makes it
easier to improve safety through regulation. We should embrace that, not whinge about it. S

7. This decision is London’s gift to the planet

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Not many cities are in a position to force Uber into anything: just ask Austin or Barcelona.

But London is. And an Uber that is less blasé about passenger safety and less high-handed with
regulators will make things better in cities all over the planet.
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This is not an emotion one often has a chance to feel, but – I’m oddly proud of my city’s
transport regulator today.
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Jonn Elledge is the editor of CityMetric. He is on Twitter as @jonnelledge
as @jonnelledge and
 and on Facebook
as JonnElledgeWrites
as JonnElledgeWrites..

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