Seaweed into buildings!
Omar Vasquez is our environmental hero this month! An entrepreneur from Mexico, he is tackling a problem many of us have seen on our beaches in the southeast United States and Caribbean: Sargassum seaweed. His solution: Sargablock, the world’s first sargassum building block! Local hotels and resorts along the Riviera Maya employ him and his team to clean the beaches of the invasive seaweed. They then turn the seaweed into construction bricks using 40% sargassum and 60% other organic materials, like discarded dirt from construction sites. Using these bricks, which they can produce 3,000 per day, they hope to make low-cost building material to build affordable housing throughout the Riviera Maya. Since 2018, forty houses have been built with these bricks. He has sold 20 of those homes and donated another 15 to low-income families in Quintana Roo. The first house they built, named Casa Angelita after his mother, is still standing after five hurricanes and six tropical storms! Checkout more about his amazing work at the links below.
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mr-sargassum-built-13-houses-with-seaweed-blocks/
https://fortomorrow.org/explore-solutions/sargablock
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-bricks-made-from-invasive-seaweed-clean-mexicos-beaches-2023-7
Photo Credit: Mexico News Daily
