• Large Lego blocks used for modular

The circular economy progresses in Africa and old traditions now serve a sustainable future.

Finnish companies boost positive development – and come across surprises along the way.

To build affordable, ecological houses that last a hundred years. To use recycled materials as raw materials and to create jobs and new business.

The vision of the Ylöjärvi-based company Block Solutions sounds almost like a circular economy utopia. Still, it is realistic.

“There is a shortfall of 50 million apartments in Africa and shocking amounts of difficult-to-recycle polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic waste everywhere. We put it to good use,” Mr. Markus Silfverberg, the founder of Block Solutions said.

The company has developed an injection moulding technique for manufacturing building modules that look like large Lego blocks and are made of recycled plastic and organic fibre, an industrial by-product. With a rubber mallet and a ring spanner, anyone can build a 50-square-metre house.

However, what the company sells to Africa is not modules or houses but factories. The first modules outside Finland were manufactured in Accra, Ghana, in April 2022. Now, production has also been launched in Egypt and Indonesia.

“Exporting building modules from Finland would not be sustainable. That is why production must be local,” Mr. Silfverberg said.

The company’s point is to use local raw materials. There will be no lack of them – plastic bottles and other plastic waste are known to be a difficult environmental problem throughout Africa. Co-operation is being initiated with Danone and many other companies using plastic packaging.

In addition to plastic, the company has used sugarcane, rice husk, hemp, bamboo and various sustainably grown tree species, among other things, as the modules’ raw materials.

By Jussi Laitinen

[The writer (Jussi Laitinen) is an award-winning author, journalist and communications expert in Finland]