Executive summary:
There are many viable approaches to the design of ecological buildings, whether it is the use of the principles of nature, such as air conditioning by termites and zebras, or the use of bamboo, which will be addressed in another file. One of these approaches consists in transforming bottles at the end of life into glass foam, which will be used as a structural material for buildings. Not only does glass foam provide insulation and protection against humidity, but it creates functionality and value from used glass and can be adapted to multiple uses. Glass often ends up in discharges, while it can be permanently reused in different forms. In addition to a building material, it can also be used as a growth environment in hydroponics. The recycling of glass thus becomes a platform for multiple products and financial flows, as well as for the creation of jobs.
Keywords: design of ecological buildings, foam glass, insulation, housing, efficiency of resources, hydroponics, landfill, cash flow, jobs.
Breakthroughs in the design of ecological buildings: it all started in a factory
If I had mastered mathematics in high school, I would have opted for a career in the design of buildings. Ideas parade before the eyes of my mind and, although I have never had the gift of drawing, actions ensure the implementation of these visions. I was directly involved for the first time in a large construction project when I took over the management of a small Belgian manufacturer of detergents on the verge of bankruptcy. I relaunched the company by resolutely opting for the construction of the first ecological factory in Europe. It was a bet to spend 100 million Belgian francs when the turnover was only 120 million at the time. In October 1992, when Carlo Ripa Di Meana, the European environment commissioner, and Lester Brown, the founder and then president of the Worldwatch Institute, inaugurated the factory, CNN made it a report in prime time. This assured him a place in the annals of ecological conception. The building book has been distributed free of charge and describes, in open source, all the materials, costs and decisions taken.
A tropical hospital
Two years later, I had the privilege of following the design and construction of the first self -sufficient hospital in Las Gaviotas in Vichada in Colombia, under the direction of Paolo Lugari. The passage of an industrial wooden structure in a temperate climate to a public service building in a warm, humid and tropical climate provided the contrast that allowed me to quickly learn how to design ecological buildings using the available resources and local climatological conditions. The team enjoyed total freedom with regard to regulations and even insurance companies, but had to face strict but ambitious objectives: it was a question of becoming the first self-sufficient hospital in electricity and water With a budget limited to $ 300,000. The team of 15 people had only one architect. The surgeon's room represented the largest lesson in architectural design. The traditional wind models have been combined with underground tunnels and equipped with aluminum stems to condense humidity. The uninterrupted air flow through the conduits made it possible to obtain a fresh and dry air with a humidity rate still less than 17 %, without using pumps or energy thanks to continuous sub-press. Each system was powered by natural flows. Carl-Göran Hedén, member of the Rome club, introduced me to the Swedish architect Bengt Warne, who designed the "House Envelope" (also known as "House of Nature") capable of self-regulating temperature And humidity in a way similar to that of the hospital in Colombia. This exhibition encouraged me to undertake a third breakthrough: the design and construction of the largest bamboo building in modern history. There was a downside: it had to be built with a German building permit. It is well known that German engineering and construction codes are the most demanding in the world. Frau Sabine MPHO, director of global projects at the Universal 2000 exhibition, had followed Zeri's initiatives at the United Nations University thanks to Heitor Gurgulino de Souza, the rector of the time. She offered us the possibility of exposing pioneering examples of companies without emissions to the Universal Exhibition. When the seventh project1 was approved and accepted for the exhibition, Sabine made a daring proposal: she suggested that we built our own pavilion. Without consulting the team, I accepted the challenge.
A German building permit for a bamboo building
I immediately asked Simon Velez, the Colombian icon of bamboo architecture, to take care of the design. In a phone call, Stephan Schmidtheiny, the Swiss philanthrope, was ready to pay the first bill for many expensive laboratory tests in German universities. The process of obtaining permits takes place quickly. On the other hand, the organization of the construction of two pavilions, one in Colombia and the other in Hanover, in the space of 14 months, was an intensive course of design and planning of buildings. Mario Calderon Rivera, president of the Manizales Chamber of Commerce and Industry, was the essential partner who alone assumed the costs of the Bamboo Pavilion in Manizales, with the support of Gabriel German Londoño and Nestor Buitrago. It is still there today and has become a symbol for the region2. I assumed the responsibility of the pavilion in Germany and it earned me an invitation as a guest teacher at the Politecnico Di Torino thanks to the tireless support of Professor Luigi Bistagnino. The experience of wood work in a temperate climate, a hospital in the tropics and the largest bamboo structure of the time, gave me enough experience in 2000 to start experimenting with myself . The construction of a bioclimatic house, "La Miñoca" in Manizales (Colombia), with the support of Carolina Salazar Ocampo, the Colombian architect, has become my personal reference. When the guests of the newly built house complained in 2003 that the room was too cold, I knew that I understood the design options based on physics, and that I may have even exaggerated.
The academic world began to take an interest in the project, starting with a surprise request from Roberto Peccei, vice-president of research from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), who wanted to give a conference on my architectural experiences . Ecological construction councils, from the United States to Australia and South Africa began to listen to certain proposals. However, I was not an architect, I did not speak the jargon and I therefore envisaged the design differently. My goal was not to create the best design, nor make a fortune by building, but to extend housing and design to a wider whole that could stimulate local economies and encourage communities to meet their own basic needs . A house is not only shelter, it is also water, food, health, energy and the ability to generate a large number of jobs3.
Scandinavian designs
The search for links between architecture and other basic needs was theoretically not difficult, but I needed a place where I could see how innovations in architectural design stimulate the clusters of new industries. I was proud to note that 250 new companies had emerged around the Bambou initiative in Colombia and that around 7,000 new jobs had been created. Later, I learned how Hang Doa and his team at Viet Nam took advantage of Colombia's experience and developed industry beyond what we imagined, with an estimate of 100,000 jobs and Rapid growth in new areas such as bamboo bicycles. I needed something deeper. During a workshop organized by Göran Carstedt with Peter Senge, in Umeå (Sweden), I came across Anders Nyquist, the Swedish architect who invented and implemented the EcoCycle house. Anders impressed me so much during our first meeting in 2004 that I changed my travel projects for the summer holidays with my sons to visit him and see Rumpan, the ecovillage he had imagined and Implemented in the 1960s. I had visited ecovillages around the world, inspired by the network of Declan Kennedy, but I had never heard of it. The fact that other villages did not recognize it triggered my interest even more. I found the proof, in Rumpan, that innovation in the design of buildings can be cheaper, healthier and build a community. It was also clear that Anders and his wife, Ingrid, were devoted to what they had proposed, and had made them their corporate philosophy. What emerged was a network of innovators around Anders, who were also inspired by him and who pushed themselves beyond the status quo. What I discovered was so refreshing that it allowed me to better understand how social and economic development can be sustainable if entrepreneurs believe in it. It was clear that I had found my grand master. Michael Raimondo produced nine video clips on remarkable and yet simple innovations implemented by Anders Nyquist and which have given birth to new industries. Anders shared his experiences and frustrations with me. He introduced me to entrepreneurs who constitute the basic network of change agents in this part of the world. I came across an emblematic green school built in the middle of the Swedish community of Timrå. I also saw the meticulous design of Greenzone5, which included a car workshop, a service station and a quick restaurant. They gathered water and energy and integrated technologies that even the gurus of the United States had not heard of, which made it possible to reach incredible levels of water, energy and efficiency . Dozens of companies have emerged around the work of Pioneer in Anders, each pushing the limits of sustainability, health and quality of life, far from the center of architecture and science. I concluded that it is because we are on the outskirts that there is greater freedom to act and think beyond the norm.
Glass and design of buildings
The long introduction was essential to disclose the knowledge and experience necessary for the emergence of opportunities. It is not the simple invention of a brilliant technology, or the finances brought by an investor, it is an active and expanding network, of increasing complexity, which allows us to orient companies towards sustainability6. While Michael Raimondo has documented nine innovations7, and Lars Ling, a very dynamic coordinator for central Sweden, published nine video clips on innovations grouped around Anders Nyquist, special business development caught attention: the Grouping of glass, insulation and discharges. Anders introduced me to Mård, the brain behind the design of the prefabricated buildings of Koljern. At first, I wondered why I was interested in prefabricated buildings, but I knew that I had to trust Anders Nyquist. It quickly appeared thatåke had developed a revolutionary concept: the creation of a house frame with, in the heart, glass foam made from recycled car windshield. Although it may seem ridiculous, I went to the site and I was impressed. When I visited a house finished, the air quality and the room temperature were remarkable.
The foam glass is made up of 97 % air, mainly CO2, which it sequests for a hundred years, which is a practical means of reducing it in the atmosphere. These millions of small bubbles not only regulate the temperature, they also do not let moisture pass. In addition, the glass melts only 1,100 ° C and does not ignite, which eliminates, or at least considerably reduced, the need to use flame retardant products. When I analyze an innovation, I am looking for a strong departure. It was a good start. Then I learned that the raw material could be old glass. Pittsburgh Corning, the Belgian supplier located in Tessenderlo, which began to produce in 1965, uses broken cars windshield. This means that the glass foam obtains a high score in terms of resource efficiency. Glass cannot be destroyed, it can only be transformed. This light foam also has structural resistance, not just an insulating power. The series of characteristics it presents offers "multiple advantages and multiple cash flows", an essential condition for the blue economy. Whenåke Mård explained the principles of glass moss, I understood that it was another classic example of the way an innovative product can replace something with nothing. This fundamental concept of the blue economy often causes the hilarity of those who hear me say it for the first time. But the foam glass quickly turned out to be my favorite case to demonstrate how a product, by its design and systemic use, can eliminate the need of several products. This gives a new dimension to sustainability. It is not an improvement in the effectiveness of the resources of a factor 4 or 10, but rather an improvement in the effectiveness of resources in magnitudes of 100 or even 1,000. Ai learned in Sweden is another case where I had to navigate between fantasy and reality. But reality appeared before me, science and profitability analysis were both solid. Our research team in the Baltic States, led by Dr. Janis Gravitis de Riga (Latvia), stressed that Russian scientists invented foam glass in the 1930s at the Mendeleyev chemical university in Moscow. The American company Pittsburgh Corning claims to have invented and industrialized. We have seen that Gomel Glass (now located in Gomel, Belarus) has been manufacturing foam glass for the local and Russian market for 50 years, on the basis of the original works of the 1930s. Although it was a vestige of The Soviet Union, it is not in disuse. Georgiy Kazak, (CEO) and Anatoliy Minin (president) are clearly at the head of the company and continue to provide foam glass for the Belarusian and Russian market.
The success of the glass portfolio:
The combination of the underlying logic and the design of prefabricated buildings of Åke Mård prompted me to ask our Zeri network in Japan to assess this advance. Tamio Ishibashi, the first vice-president of Daiwa House, the largest manufacturer of houses in Japan, with some 40,000 units built per year, sent a team in Sweden to assess performance and the conclusion was positive. He was impressed by Anders Nyquist's work and invited him to Japan to demonstrate the principles of natural air traffic in their office buildings in Sendai. The confidence of Japanese partners reassured us about the accuracy of my intuition. Then, in 2005, a meeting took place at the European headquarters of Pittsburgh Corning in Belgium. The executives received me politely, but the management of the time did not grasp the potential economic impact they could have on a regional scale. It is therefore not surprising that leadership moves from a multinational to a portfolio of innovative companies. Having visited the Tessenderlo glass foam factory (Belgium), I was able to compare its technical processes with those of the young Earth Stone company - an American company created in 1995 by Gay Dillingham and Andrew Ungerleiter in Santa Fe, -Mexico. Pittsburgh Corning strives to produce with an ever -increasing economy of scale and continuously reduce marginal costs. Dillingham and his team, on the other hand, devote themselves to the design of tailor -made glass foam for uses that I had never heard of before. The traditional activity based on a basic competence had put wipedes in Pittsburgh Corning and I understood that Pittsburgh Corning and Zeri were not an ideal adequacy and we therefore did not insist. However, Åke continued his concepts of design and his decades of practical experience allowed him to obtain a patent which overthrew the situation of his supplier: now that Koljern (the Åke construction system) built his logic around the Mousse glass, the multinational began to show interest beyond the supplier-client relationship. Koljern has become a key element in the design of energy -efficient housing, which earned Åke Mård an annual prize well deserved by the 2013 Swedish innovator for buildings.
Meanwhile, Gay Dillingham (left photo) was a portfolio of unique patents around another version of the foam glass: 95 % of its raw materials were diverted from the discharges. She created the supply chain from the Albuquerque landfill. The glass was ground as finely as the flour for bread and gave birth to four lines of products. The creation of this portfolio was motivated by the desire to replace the raw materials extracted with recycled glass. In accordance with the principles of the blue economy, produced products have a higher value to the simple bottle from which they come. Earth Stone always operates the Light, Ecological and Structural Building Materials Market and Construction Materials, but the main activity has gone to horticulture9.
Glass recycling has become a platform technology, penetrating multiple sectors. This is the prerequisite for the implementation of a framework where an innovative commercial model stimulates dozens to innovate. One of the applications that has developed is foam glass as a growth support for tomatoes and strawberries in greenhouses. Glass foam is very porous, does not contain chemicals and allows the floor to ventilate while ensuring a good water balance in the roots. This production technique allows you to personalize the growth environment to adapt it to a wide range of plants and agricultural techniques. If we consider that most hydroponic growth substrates consist of mined perlite or hydroton, this innovative application places glass in an endless cycle. Glass foam can be reconditioned to become the growth substrate of the following season. This shows that a non -biodegradable product can be highly ecological, provided that one strives to create the loop. The success of "Growstone" prompted Gay and its team to transform the company into a separate unit. The creative team of Earth Stone has designed two additional products: cleaning and personal care products for consumers, and abrasives, aggregates and filtration means for the industry. The "Quicksand" sanding block lasts longer than the sandpaper and each block is made from a bottle of beer. Cleaning products for swimming pools and kitchens are alternatives based on "physical" rather than toxic chemicals. The four sectors of activity of Earth Stone and the experience of research, which started without prior experience in the field, led to a design of the production of very flexible foam glass, capable of meeting almost all technical requirements of the customer. The highly standardized series production of Belgium now contrasts with the highly flexible small series of the United States.
Harvey Stone © Stone
when I started organizing a series of training courses in the blue economy in Santa Fe, in New Mexico (USA), my students from the first course in 2002, guided by Harvey Stone, had the Chance to study the Earth Stone business model and make detailed assessments of current and future opportunities for foam glass on the basis of raw materials, industrial process, marketing and recovery of used materials. We have analyzed the mathematics of the company based on European and American experiences and we arrived at remarkable conclusions: the foam glass produced
from diverted discharge bottles reaches its profitability threshold with only 5.2 million bottles and, using windshields, the balance is reached with about double the volume. When we started applying the model to wine production, we realized that we have a new systemic approach to the debate on glass and plastic bottles. The Bordeaux vineyards distribute 450 million bottles per year, and France drinks 3.8 billion of
bottles.
Factories
In 2010, American consumers exceeded the French, for the first time, as the largest wine drinkers, with a total volume of 4 billion bottles. We have calculated that, on the basis of wine bottle waste alone, up to 750 glass recycling factories could be created in America and 700 in France. When we start to extrapolate this emerging industry, the logic moves away from the traditional recycling of glass where a bottle is converted in the bottle. We know that this process is not competitive and that it can therefore only be undertaken if the law obliges companies and that additional costs and costs are applied. But we have identified something that is much better: entrepreneurs can adopt the addition of value to the used glass by injecting CO2 and jobs are created beyond what the glass industry has been able to achieve. It generates multiple cash flows and can therefore offer products at competitive prices. A recycled product (glass bottles from glass bottles) which can rather be converted into a wallet of recycled products which generate multiple cash flows. It is an excellent example of the blue economy. Switzerland is a single market for glass because it is the world champion in glass collection. With 98 %, the Swiss have the highest glass recycling rate: 320,000 tonnes of waste converted into raw materials. It is therefore not surprising that the Swiss produce more value from the glass than anyone. Misapor AG is the market leader and Daniel ENGI, the CEO since 1995, has a clear regional growth strategy, controlling 4 factories. Misapor produces 200,000 m3 of foam glass per year in Switzerland with 2 production units, 240,000 m3 in Germany and 30,000m3 in Italy. The company has listed its license technologies for the production of foam glass in ECO, a Swiss engineering group based in CEO, in order to ensure a rapid internationalization of its know-how. Jakob Federspiel, Director of Enca (Switzerland) offers the marketing of key production projects under the name of Misapor® and they have dozens of current initiatives. Product portfolios and production techniques that we have observed on both sides of the Atlantic have shown that, more than replacing a bottle, it is a question of substituting multiple different products with a potential for modifying the Efficiency of the resources of a centuries or more factor. Glass can always be reconditioned and always be recycled. It must be considered as an asset and not as a cost in the balance sheets. When the market leader leaves such an unexploited opportunity and a entrepreneur shows the progress that could be made, this invites more competition. At Zeri, information is always shared in open source and, as products like foam glass are local products that could penetrate many niches, new initiatives around the world would not compete. Pittsburgh Corning woke up late and created a new production unit in Klasterc (Czech Republic). Now that the pressure is strong, as described below, the company builds a factory in China to meet growing demand in this country. If Earth Stone continues to focus on the vast American market, it has also ventured in the Netherlands with its range of Growstone products for horticulture and greenhouses. This encouraged other people, such as tomato producers, to become proactive entrepreneurs.
Foam glass in the future:
The European Union has recognized the opportunity for foam glass from glass waste and financed the creation of JSC Stikloporas (www.stikloporas.lt) in Druskininkai (Lithuania). Since 2012, Edgaras Krusas, the CEO, has hired 24 glass foam experts who provide production 24/7. The company has embarked on the light construction of houses in Poland, Russia, Belarus and in Baltic countries. It is in direct competition with the Finnish Mousse glass manufacturer, Uusioaines Ltd. (www.foamit.fi), which inaugurated its factory in 2011 with a production capacity of 150,000 m3, under the supervision of Jari Stenberg (President)
and Lassi Julin (CEO). Our current estimate of the European market is that at least 10 factories have been built are under construction across Europe, driven by the competitive portfolio of products and services. Total investment has exceeded 100 million euros and the generation of jobs is now 1,200 direct jobs. However, if we include indirect jobs related to the collection and separation of the glass at source, 3,000 additional jobs could be created.
While the current production volume in Europe barely exceeds one million m3, it increases at a two -digit rate and we plan that before 2020, 25 factories will be operational on the continent and that the Asian market will take off. In countries like Switzerland, where glass recycling rate has reached its limit, replacing plastic containers with glass is a guaranteed growth strategy for foam glass. The only way to increase the supply of glass is to return to the glass containers from plastic containers and now that the insulation demand in houses reaches new peaks, we see this inversion as the trend of 'future. This points out a fundamental restructuring of the traffic jam industry. We consider glass foam as one of the few reindustrialisation initiatives motivated by the new efficiency of resources. Glass cannot be composted or cremated, but it can be reused with more value. The plastic of drinks has a functional lifespan that is counted in days, and a half-life of several decades, even several centuries. Thanks to this innovation, we can put the economy on the blue path of entrepreneurship.
Translation in Gunter Fables
The glass trade is translated into fable n ° 52 entitled "The Palais de Cristal". She is dedicated to Åke Mård, who had already inspired the creation of this cluster, in 2004, with her Koljern technique.
Documentation
www.youtube.com/watch?
vimeo.com/album/2916248. www.earthstoneinternational.com/our-company/our-technology
www.misapor.ch/files/kurzportrait-misapor.pdf
