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Comment by nexthash | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people here are asking the same question and I can't find it addressed anywhere: how does this product not heavily pollute the environment? Since the bricks contain plastic they are prone to flaking and the formation of microplastic particles, which can last for thousands of years and get into the digestive systems of animals and humans. Also, the plastic might crack from constant UV radiation under the Kenyan sun. Could somebody explain what the rationale might be for putting 1000 plastic bricks/day into the environment or if there's something I'm missing?

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> how does this product not heavily pollute the environment?

They do. Everything pollutes the environment, including breathing. Do you think solar panels don't have toxic chemicals in them?

The sensible way to judge this relative, not absolute. The question you should be asking is not whether plastic bricks are bad, it's whether they're worse than whatever happens to the plastic waste in Kenya that isn't used to make bricks.

I dont understand why people are so cynical about this stuff. Re-using is absolutely part of the solution. It's either pavers or blowing around in the wind into the water, until we can revolutionize recycling.

Not only that. Where would the material used instead of this plastic come from?

Clay, like most bricks?

It's why I don't get the aversion to nuclear energy much. I mean yeah, the waste product is super dangerous and an accident causes dangerous pollution, but one alternative is fossil fuel plants whose emissions are causing a ton of shit. And hydro power has caused tens of thousands of deaths.

I'm not saying it's one or the other or anything. Actually I'm mainly pissed at Germany for closing dozens of nuclear power plants, going back to coal.

You're missing the fact that the plastic was already there.

As another poster mentioned - in Kenya, waste plastic is commonly burned on the side of a road. Turning it into bricks is an improvement on this.

As a materials engineer, I'm sure she has the UV aspect worked out.

There is no proof that microplastic harms humans, so I would not call it "heavily polluting" until we have hard proof that it actually is.

The entertainment industry loves stories about inventions in Africa. Occasionally, people make the honest mistake of thinking it's newsworthy. I am quite confident you will never hear or see of these bricks, that they are numerous different ways they are not commercially viable, and that they are probably as bad or worse for the environment than just throwing the garbage in a landfill.

(although I'd certainly be glad to be wrong)

In all honesty, it's more newsworthy than yet another post about some superfluous, polluting, or outright damaging software startup/service/toy for adults.

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