I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll...build your house up
January 24, 2019 5:24 PM   Subscribe

Researchers in Australia believe globally stockpiled sewage sludge could be used to make biosolids bricks, an advance that could boost sustainability in the construction industry. The paper: A Proposal for Recycling the World’s Unused Stockpiles of Treated Wastewater Sludge (Biosolids) in Fired-Clay Bricks.

From the abstract:

Biosolids are a product of the wastewater sludge treatment process. Stockpiles necessitate the use of large areas of increasingly valuable land. Biosolids have many beneficial uses and are currently utilised in agricultural and land rehabilitation applications. However, it is estimated that 30% of biosolids are unused and stockpiled. A second and seemingly unrelated environmental issue is the massive excavation of virgin soil for brick production. The annual production of 1500 billion bricks globally requires over 3.13 billion cubic metres of clay soil—equivalent to over 1000 soccer fields dug 440 m deep or to a depth greater than three times the height of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This paper investigates and proposes a practical solution for the utilisation of the world’s excess biosolids in fired–clay bricks.
posted by mandolin conspiracy (23 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
Whole new angle on "bricks were shat."
posted by tclark at 5:33 PM on January 24, 2019 [14 favorites]


What is this, Metafilter Poop Week?
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:47 PM on January 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


We'll all be shitting bricks if these people have their way.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:47 PM on January 24, 2019


Well not me actually, I'm on septic.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:48 PM on January 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


Move over brick shithouse, it's shit brickhouse!
posted by mubba at 5:51 PM on January 24, 2019 [31 favorites]


According to RMIT, the United States produces about 7.1 million tonnes of biosolids a year, the EU over nine million tonnes, and Australia 327,000 tonnes.

US population: 325,145,963
EU population: 512,596,403
Australia population: 24,511,800

Biosolids per person per year, US: 21.84kg
Biosolids per person per year, EU: 17.56kg
Biosolids per person per year, Australia: 13.34kg

Americans are so full of shit.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:56 PM on January 24, 2019 [2 favorites]


We'll all be shitting bricks if these people have their way.

When they said the future of humanity was cyborgs, I don't think that was quite what they had in mind.
posted by redrawturtle at 5:59 PM on January 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


Turning human waste into bricks for building things seems like a pretty neat idea, to be honest.
posted by redrawturtle at 6:19 PM on January 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


well, i guess if donnie really wants his wall, he'd better get to work
posted by pyramid termite at 6:51 PM on January 24, 2019 [11 favorites]


Yeah, I’m amazed a way to do this hasn’t been perfected already. But, in principle, I can get behind this shit.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:02 PM on January 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


Shit has a good history as a building material. I was fortunate enough to visit a small Maasai village in Kenya once, in an area where other building materials are scarce, and most of their buildings were constructed using dried (possibly fired, I don't recall exactly) cattle dung. I remember they did a nice job of thermal insulation, keeping the inside cool despite the hot equatorial sun. I'm a little unclear whether it was used as a structural element or a weatherproofing facade, but I do remember it still retained a distinctive odor. Our guide, who had been born in such a village but moved to Nairobi for work, said the smell always made him nostalgic for his hometown.

I don't know when the Maasai started building houses that way, but when you've got a lot of something it makes sense to find a way to use it. The Maasai have a lot of cows and hence cow shit. Those of us living in developed urban areas have lots of, well, us, and hence our own shit. Bricking our shit seems like a good idea.
posted by biogeo at 7:31 PM on January 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


a brick .... house
Well put-together, everybody knows
This is how the story goes
posted by otherchaz at 7:32 PM on January 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


It's-a mighty mighty
Keepin' all the elements out
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:36 PM on January 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


I'm sure I saw something very similar a few years ago that had been developed in India. It was at an exhibition at the excellent Wellcome Collection in London, and I think the bricks may even have been used to build toilets.
posted by Fuchsoid at 8:04 PM on January 24, 2019


To be fair, Australians have a natural advantage when it comes to bricks made from bowel movements.
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:39 PM on January 24, 2019 [3 favorites]


Now I sit here
Broken-hearted,
Tried to build a sustainable dwelling out of biomass,
But only farted.
posted by darkstar at 9:32 PM on January 24, 2019 [9 favorites]


These are some big environmental/energy conservation wins:

Making biosolids bricks only required around half the energy of conventional bricks [48.6 per cent for bricks incorporating 25 per cent biosolids]. Biosolids bricks also had a lower thermal conductivity, transferring less heat to potentially give buildings higher environmental performance.

About five million tonnes of the biosolids produced in Australia, New Zealand, the EU, US and Canada currently go to landfill or stockpiles each year. RMIT maintain that using just 15 per cent biosolids content in 15 per cent of bricks produced could use up surplus biosolids.

More than three billion cubic metres of clay soil is dug up each year for the global brickmaking industry, to produce about 1.5 trillion bricks.

So using surplus biosolids globally to make 15% biosolid bricks could save having to dig up almost half a billion cubic metres of clay per year, reduce landfill needs, save around 30% of the energy cost of brick production, and improve the energy efficiency of the buildings they're used in.
posted by rory at 2:32 AM on January 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


Brick manufacturing can help deal with other waste problems, too, like sugarcane bagasse, which is often burned as fuel in sugar mills and produces a lot of ash: [Sugarcane bagasse ash] bricks were lighter in weight (43%) and higher in compressive strength (32%) and had lower thermal conductivity (70%) than commercially available fly ash (FA) bricks. ... The developed SBA bricks were found suitable for non-load-bearing wall construction with better physico-mechanical properties and more economic as compared to commercially available sustainable FA bricks.
posted by rory at 3:11 AM on January 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


What do you think wattle and daub was??
posted by Burn_IT at 9:00 AM on January 25, 2019


A turkey with a small paintbrush?
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:15 AM on January 25, 2019 [5 favorites]


😆
posted by darkstar at 12:56 PM on January 25, 2019


Shitbricks is actually a pretty catchy name. They would probably cut down on absent-minded scraping away at bricks.
posted by msalt at 4:56 PM on January 25, 2019


biogeo: "Shit has a good history as a building material."

It's a component of the daub in Wattle and Daub construction.
posted by Mitheral at 9:00 AM on January 27, 2019


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