A group of students from Prasetiya Mulya Business School in Indonesia recently won the 2009 Global Social Venture Competition with their “EcoFaeBrick“, a quality, easily manufactured, low-cost sustainable building material made from cow dung. The bricks are not only 20% lighter, but they have a compressive strength 20% stronger than clay bricks and their production doesn’t rely upon devastating quarry mining techniques.
The EcoFaeBrick mission is to provide a highly economical solution to a waste problem while helping to curb the destruction of the local environment caused by clay quarries (pictured below). The bricks are made using 75% cow manure and cured in a biogas heating process that reduces the brick factory’s CO2 emissions significantly over traditional wood fire heat.
EcoFaeBrick claims that the process will raise participating farmers’ incomes by 53%, which will help to raise their quality of life (and hopefully they will hire and teach some ex-clay miners how to farm). All in all this seems like a win-win venture and it is nice to see GSVC recognizing the development and helping to spread awareness for the technology. A warm congratulations from Inhabitat!
+ Global Social Venture Competition
Via Bustler
It seems that every time you announce a technology that utilizes animal waste you give it a title like \”POO BRICKS\”. I think you are doing a disservice to the technology and the people developing it. If you want people to take something seriously you need to take it seriously yourself. The \”icky\” way a topic is treated perpetuates the \”icky\” perception. Love the blog just tired of the childishness.