Eco Bricks and Their Benefits 

By Mallory Williams

Eco Brick? I Hardly Know Her.

I’ve noticed recently that there’s been some buzz about greener, and cheaper, building materials. Sustainable buildings have caught my eye recently. These projects are built with recycled materials, or include them, that minimize reliance on external resources. If you hardly know eco bricks, here is a nice introduction to them! Eco bricks have been on the rise, and with good reason. Eco bricks are pretty easy to make and can be used for structure and installation when building small scale projects. Eco bricks are made with plastic containers made with PET, polyethylene terephthalate, condensed tightly with non recyclable, soft plastics. Like plastic bags, clean plastic wrappers, ect.

Eco Brick Champ: Nathan Gray

 Nathan Gray is the CEO of Plastic Recycled, a Barrington-based company that is “creating new life from single-use plastics,” this is their company motto. Gray stated that he knows how it is pretty dang easy, my words not his, to find plastic waste and to clean it up, and make it into something great. In Gray’s actual words, “I’ve realized how much dumpsters full of waste that we were throwing away, a lot of it being single-use packing material, or wood that was used and tossed into a landfill that didn’t need to be,”(Wroblewski, cbsnews).

Nathan Gray stands with eco-bricks, photo received from cbsnews report by Sarah Wroblewski

For Eco Brick Beginners

But say you don’t build sheds or furniture, like probably most of us. I mean I don’t build sheds or anything, I just like environmentally friendly projects. Eco bricks can be made on the individual level to prevent single use plastics from breaking down into microplastics that have larger issues. Crazy that something so small can affect our everyday health, but that’s usually how things go nowadays. Stuff we can’t even see that makes us sick. Not only us, but our fish, our animals, our plants. The planet. 

And for plastic that we can see that’s nasty, gross, and bad too. The plastic used to make eco bricks are with thick plastic bottles that are made of PET plastics that take about 450 years to break down. Yes, 450 dang years to break down which is insane? I’ve touched on this before in a previous blog, recycling these plastics is ideal, but they have to be recycled correctly. Unfortunately, if they aren’t : they are discarded to the landfill. So, I take the PET plastic bottles, so your juice jugs or Dr. Pepper bottles, and fill them with single use plastics as much as I can fit. The single use plastics have to be cleaned without food waste. The food waste can result in bacteria growth which wouldn’t be ideal for building or to add to the landfill. If there is methane trapped within the brick, it could combust and release the chemicals and plastics into the environment or in your wall made with the bricks. Both are a nasty sight.

My Recent Eco Brick

If you’re looking for a new way to reduce some plastic waste from the landfill, and as a result in our waterways, eco bricks are a great way to do it. Here is a photo below of my new eco brick I have been working on recently. You can tell it’s mine because I left my thumb in the picture for proof. It looks like this bad boy full, but it can definitely fit more plastic. Just gotta jam that plastic in there with the handle of a plastic spoon or something. I try to put in as much as I can! It takes up minimum space of course, and is also a way to notice how much plastic waste I produce. I personally have been throwing away my eco bricks, as I have only made a couple, and don’t have the space to save up for a larger project at the moment. When I do, I will share it. Thank you for reading!