Waste-collection training in Hoima
Community members in Hoima learned how to collect and sort plastic waste. Sorting matters: each plastic type melts differently, and collectors earn money for what they bring in.
A Makerere University research project
Eco-Bricks
Sawdust-plastic bricks and pavers for low-cost housing in Uganda. The project turns two waste streams into building materials communities can use.
Led by Dr. Christine Nagawa · Funded by a TWAS Early Career Women Scientists Fellowship
The problem
Why build with waste?
Uganda's sawmills produce sawdust much faster than anyone can use it, so most of it is dumped or burned. Plastic is worse. Imports and use grew six-fold in three years, and since plastic doesn't biodegrade, whatever isn't collected ends up in landfills, in water bodies, or on a fire. Burning it releases gases linked to cancer and respiratory disease.
Housing demand is rising at the same time. The standard answer, fired clay bricks, comes at a cost of its own: the clay is dug from wetlands and the kilns burn wood. A brick made from waste avoids both.
- 6×growth in Uganda's plastic imports and use over three years
- 95%of plastic packaging value is lost after a single use
- 6%annual urban growth in Uganda. Demand for bricks grows with it.
The method
How the bricks are made
Collected plastic is sorted by type, cleaned, and melted in a closed system so nothing toxic escapes. Sawdust goes into the molten plastic, and the mix is moulded into standard-size bricks and pavers. Each batch is then tested against the fired clay and sand-cement bricks Ugandan builders use today.
The research will establish
- Whether stable sawdust-plastic bricks and pavers can be made at scale
- Their weight, density, shrinkage, swelling and moisture uptake
- How their strength compares with conventional bricks
- How they hold up in real construction, including test walls and model houses
Industrial and community partners are involved from the start, so that brick-making continues in these communities well after the research funding ends.
Field work
What we've been doing
Learning from Ecobrix in Masaka
The team visited Ecobrix, one of Uganda's largest plastic recycling centres, to see plastic processing at production scale before settling on the project's own methods.
Skills for women's groups
Not all plastic is suitable for bricks. Women's groups learn to turn the rest into products they can sell, such as bags and pegs.
People
The team
Dr. Christine Betty Nagawa
Principal Investigator
Lecturer in the Department of Forestry, Biodiversity and Nature Conservation at Makerere University, with a PhD from BOKU Vienna. Her research covers environmental chemistry and waste management, and this project grew out of her work on wood-plastic composites.
Mwesigwa David
MSc Forest Resources Management
Graduate researcher on the project.
Raymond Gitta
BSc Forestry, 4th year
Undergraduate researcher on the project.
Working with
Partners
The project works with Ecobrix in Masaka, Ecoplastile, the Katikolo Waste Workers and Sorters Association, municipal waste authorities, and community women's groups.
Contact
Get in touch
Department of Forestry, Biodiversity and Nature Conservation
School of Forestry, Environmental and Geographical Sciences
Makerere University, P.O. Box 7062, Kampala, Uganda
MakerereUniversity
