New Bricks Can Be Made Out Of Junk We Aren’t Using

What should we do with our industrial waste? Put it into our homes and offices, of course. Technology to turn the millions of tons of waste from factories, building sites and processing facilities into something besides landfill has led researchers to fabricate bricks out of TVs, computers, paper waste, incinerator ash, rubble and other materials that were conventionally considered useless. Now Spanish researchers are fabricating bricks out of the 30 million tons or so tons of paper industry waste generated in the U.S. and Europe each year. Although their manufacture is not glamorous--the bricks emerge "like sausages" before being cut to size--are structurally sound and divert tons of waste water sludge and cellulose residue into useful applications, state researchers publishing in the journal Fuel Processing Technology. The techniques also boosts bricks’ insulating propertie...