EPFL student turns plastic waste into bricks for building
As part of her master’s thesis, Selina Heiniger from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) developed a method for manufacturing construction bricks from plastic waste. She mixes plastic waste, concrete and terracotta.
For her master’s thesis in civil engineering, Selina Heiniger developed a method for the more sustainable production of building material. According to a press release from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne ( EPFL ), she uses plastic waste, concrete that has already been used and terracotta bricks that have been made small.
In her master’s thesis, Heiniger wanted to tackle two related challenges: reducing environmental pollution from plastic waste and developing construction methods that use fewer raw materials.
She developed bricks made from recycled plastic – polypropylene (PP), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) – as well as crushed terracotta bricks and recycled concrete. Their bricks are designed to interlock, so no mortar is required. Initial tests are encouraging, but the invention is still in the prototype stage. If successful, Heiniger’s work could make a significant contribution to reducing the construction industry’s carbon footprint.
Heiniger graduated from high school in the canton of Bern and then enrolled at the EPFL to study civil engineering. At first she only studied part-time, as she also worked in a civil engineering company in Lausanne.
Selina Heiniger’s master’s thesis was jointly developed by Corentin Fivet, head of EPFL’s Laboratory for Structural Exploration in the Faculty of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Yves Leterrier, a senior scientist at EPFL’s Laboratory for Advanced Composites Processing in the Faculty of engineering, supervised.