Sustainable small-scale brick production
Practical Action
The issues
The production of conventional building materials impacts on the environment in several ways.
Poor quarry management generates lots of waste and leaves behind disused pits. Smoke and
dust affect the health of workers and neighbouring residents alike. The biggest impact is,
however, usually caused by the energy used in their production. This is where Practical Action
concentrates most of its efforts.
Leaving aside the metal industry, which affects fewer countries, the binders and heavy clay
industries are the principal energy users. Practical Action has worked for over 20 years on the
production of these materials in a dozen countries. During the past decade, its emphasis has
been on the production of bricks and lime by Small and Medium Scale Enterprise (SMEs).
Practical Action is particularly interested in SMEs, because they:
• generate a lot of income: for example in Bangladesh alone, brick production accounts
for over 200 000 jobs;
• often produce the bulk of these materials, for example SMEs account for 85% of total
brick production in Sri Lanka;
• have lesser transport requirements which saves energy;
• are often the greatest polluters, and improving them is therefore likely to generate
greater environmental benefits
The production of bricks by SMEs often relies on fuelwood as its main source of energy. Wood
consists of nearly 50% carbon; if burnt completely, one kg of wood releases around 1.8 kg
CO2, the main greenhouse gas. Moreover, each tree cut down for fuel reduces the "CO2 sink",
the environment's capacity to absorb this
gas from the air. The inefficient use of
woodfuel by SMEs thus contributes to
the global environmental crisis, though
this is nowhere near the negative
contribution attributable to vehicle
emissions.
This issue also affects the sustainability
of many SMEs. In Malawi, for instance,
the number of people active in lime
production is reported to have decreased
from 2374 in 1989 to below 500 in
1998, largely because of fuelwood
scarcity. Fuel costs can amount to 50%
of total production costs. Energy
efficiency, therefore, lies at the heart of
the commercial viability and
sustainability of SMEs.
The challenges for Practical Action are
therefore to improve the energy
efficiency of brick production at the SME
level and explore alternatives to wood as
fuel. This can be achieved by scaling up
towards larger and more modern
production methods, but that would
displace many SMEs and cause large-
scale redundancies. Besides, the
environmental impact would not
necessarily have been less but different.
Instead, Practical Action has opted for
working with SMEs in cleaning up their
act.
Figure 2: Brick makers are shown building the
clamp kiln prior to firing, Zimbabwe. Photo:
Practical Action / Janet Boston.
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