Kendall Jenner’s Tequila Brand Is Repurposing The Spirit’s Leftovers Into Bricks

Images via 818

Waste not, want not, and for Kendall Jenner’s tequila brand, it’s down to the last drip—or brick.

818, the tequila company founded by the model, has been saving typically discarded agave fibers and liquids to produce adobe bricks since October last year. Its 818 Bricks Program, launched with Mexican nonprofit SACRED, makes 1,000 of these bricks per week and has now prepared enough to build a library for a school in Zapotitlán de Vadillo, as well as a tasting room for a family-owned distillery in Tuxpan, Jalisco.

SACRED is dedicated to improving the lives of rural Mexican communities that are home to agave spirit production by growing agave, building libraries, providing water security, and bringing earthquake relief.

Each brick contains 10% to 15% of agave fiber as a binding material, with the other components including  local soil and clay. About 5% comes from an acidic agave leftover liquid called viñaza, which makes the bricks more resistant to water.

Regular bricks need to be baked in a kiln for about 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit, Fast Company details. In contrast, these adobe bricks don’t even require energy. If planned with great care, buildings with adobe bricks could even have net-zero carbon impact.

Eric Gómez Ibarra of bioclimatic architecture firm, who designed the 818 brick-reinforced projects, notes that adobe bricks have been used for millenniums. And although they’re so much friendlier on the environment, they’re not scalable like conventional bricks, so builders hardly use them anymore. The quality of each batch of agave waste, soil, or clay means the formula has to keep changing each time.

One additional perk, though, is the bricks’ natural ability to adapt to temperatures, trapping heat in the day and then releasing it during the night. They can keep buildings cool and potentially replace air conditioning. 

[via Fast Company and Apartment Therapy, images via 818]