(Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Bowers)
A new product is aiming to completely eliminate all the waste from building job sites.
PLAEX bricks are mortarless, reusable and made from over 90 per cent recycled items.
Founder and product developer Dustin Bowers of Hampstead, N.B., said the garbage in the building industry has always bugged him.
“It has been really exciting to develop this product and actually have something that is durable and long-lasting and we can remove all of the job site waste,” he said.
Bowers got the idea from a research paper where they were using shredded up plastic as an aggregate in concrete, cured with water.
He realized he could inverse that model, remove the water and replace it with heat.
“48 per cent recycling of something that is about three or four times as much volume as municipal waste still means we’re landfilling twice as much construction debris as we are municipal waste,” he said.
One of the key factors of the bricks is they can also be used with existing structures and integrate well with finishing methods such as drywall. The bricks hold screws better than wood or concrete without chipping, and there can be specially made blocks for use with electrical and plumbing integration or rebar and concrete reinforcement.
Bowers said initial testing has shown that this material is more impact, water and crack resistant than traditional brick or concrete. He is working on funding so they can test the PLAEX bricks for certification to be used in buildings for structural purposes.
