INDUSTRY & INNOVATION IN-DEPTH The K-BRIQ
Building sustainability from the ground up
More than a decade of research at Heriot-Watt University has created a brick that turns construction and demolition waste into an ultra-low carbon certified building material that is reshaping how an entire industry thinks about its materials.
The UK uses around 2.5 billion bricks every year. More than 350 million are imported, including around 50 million from outside the EU. The construction industry remains the single largest contributor to landfill waste in the country with construction, demolition and excavation waste accounting for an estimated 60 to 65 per cent of total waste generated in the UK. Globally more than a third of all landfill material is of construction origin.
The industry has known about this sustainability challenge for years. But what it has lacked is a certified, commercially viable, aesthetically credible material that turns that waste stream into something a developer, architect or specifier can confidently use. Recognising this enormous global challenge, that is exactly what Heriot-Watt University set out to create.
The K-BRIQ was developed by Professor Gabriela Medero, over more than a decade. The work began as a fundamental question about whether construction waste could be reformulated into a building material but it took more than 10 years of interdisciplinary collaboration between civil engineers, chemists, architects and geologists to answer that question.
The result is a brick made from nearly 100 percent recycled construction and demolition waste. Old bricks, rubble, mortar and recycled plasterboard form the core material, processed and certified inert by waste management partners and then formed under high hydraulic pressure without firing. The manufacturing process consumes a fraction of the energy used in traditional brick production. At the end of its life, the K-BRIQ can be recycled back into a new K-BRIQ, closing the circular loop entirely.
The spinout company Kenoteq, co-founded by Professor Medero and Dr Sam Chapman, was established in 2019 to take this from the laboratory into the market. Its East Lothian factory now has the capacity to produce millions of bricks annually, with scope to increase production as demand grows. The factory can turn processed waste into finished, ready-to-distribute bricks within 24 hours of the material arriving on site.
The UK uses around 2.5 billion bricks every year. More than 350 million are imported, including around 50 million from outside the EU.
What began as a research question about whether construction waste could become a building material is now a certified, commercially available product.
The brick is available in
beautiful colours using recycled pigments
For an innovative material to cross from admired to specified, certification is everything. The K-BRIQ underwent an unprecedented level of technical evaluation, passing 16 rigorous tests to secure full certification from the British Board of Agrément, the UK's leading construction certification body, achieving the maximum durability rating possible. This was not a straightforward process. No standard testing regime existed for a non-traditional material of this type, so the certification pathway had to be created alongside the product itself.
With BBA certification secured, the K-BRIQ can now be specified on commercial projects across the UK, meeting insurance, warranty and mortgage requirements. Certification has also been secured in the United States through the DrJ Technical Evaluation Report, with European certification underway. The K-BRIQ is also available in 12 beautiful colours using recycled pigments.
The product has been delivered across a range of sectors. Scotland's National Retrofit Centre was an early adopter. Projects have followed at Oaklands College in St Albans, Gail’s Bakery chain and in a sustainability-blueprint hypermarket for Europe’s largest retailer, the Schwarz Group. At Stoke-on-Trent College, the Medero Dark Grey K-BRIQ forms the contrasting plinth work on the Learning Teaching Building. The Yard Theatre in Hackney Wick uses the K-BRIQ in its facade. With the theatre based in one of London's most creative and visible districts, this represents the product's most public architectural statement to date.
The product has reached well beyond building facades, featuring in leading garden shows year on year, demonstrating that circular materials can be as relevant in landscaping and outdoor design as in commercial construction. The K-BRIQ was also used to build showcase structures at both COP26 in Glasgow and COP28 in Dubai.
The K-BRIQ is available in a range of colours.
The interior of Kenoteq’s new manufacturing facility.
In 2025, Kenoteq was nominated for the Earthshot Prize by Arup and the Royal Academy of Engineering, placing it among the world's most promising environmental innovations.
The recognition the K-BRIQ has attracted reflects the breadth of the problem it addresses. It won STEM Research Project of the Year at the Times Higher Education Awards in 2020, widely regarded as the Oscars of higher education. It took Sustainable Design of the Year at the 2022 Dezeen Awards, an awards scheme that attracted over 5,400 entries from 90 countries, also winning the public vote.
In 2025, Kenoteq was nominated for the Earthshot Prize by Arup and the Royal Academy of Engineering, placing it among the world's most promising environmental innovations.
Kenoteq has since met with HRH King Charles III during a roundtable at Windsor Castle on circularity and sustainable material solutions. From a research conversation in an Edinburgh-based university laboratory to a seat at Windsor Castle, the distance the K-BRIQ has travelled is a measure of what more than a decade of determined, applied university research can produce.
A brick made from nearly
recycled construction and demolition waste
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