Dive Brief:

• To take a chunk out of the energy consumed in manufacturing building materials, scientists are working on products that can be produced from natural materials — sometimes waste — and function as well as traditional products.
• One advocate for them is the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, among whose goals include having products be made with renewable energy and be reusable.
• A couple of the items developed are bricks that are grown in forms rather than baked, using bacteria to generate a cement that binds sand together, and insulation in which fungi work on agricultural waste products to make an insulation in place, including inside a wall.

Dive Insight:

The construction industry gets credit, and not in a good way, for as much as 40% of landfill waste and the same percentage of carbon emissions. This program looks for ways to get that monkey off the industry's back to disarm critics. About two-fifths of the cost of bricks made by baking clay is for heating the kilns.