Earthshot Prize nomination for UEL project

Sugarcrete® has been nominated in the ‘Build a Waste-Free World’ category as part of the environmental prize founded by Prince William in 2020.

The Earthshot Prize aims to discover, celebrate, accelerate, and scale solutions that can help put the world firmly on a trajectory towards a stable climate, where communities, oceans and biodiversity thrive in harmony by 2030.

Sugarcrete® uses the fibrous sugarcane by-product from sugar extraction, called bagasse, that could provide a sustainable alternative to concrete. It has the potential to be used and re-used in new or existing structures, replacing both brick and concrete.

Developed over two years with industry partner Tate & Lyle Sugars, testing of the material in UEL’s SRI laboratory, led by Dr. Bamdad Ayati, showed that using Sugarcrete®, when compared to concrete production, reduces curing time to one week (a process that takes up to 28-days), is four to five times lighter than concrete block, only uses 15 – 20 per cent of its carbon footprint and provides substantially reduced costs.

A project to develop a re-usable, modular Sugarcrete® floor slab involves a close collaboration with research partners Grimshaw Architects and will be exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in 2023.

Armor Gutierrez Rivas, Senior Lecturer in Architecture at UEL, said,

We believe that Sugarcrete® can support construction in the Global South where materials are frequently imported, poor performing and produce levels of cost and carbon. We are beyond proud and honoured to have nominated for the Earthshot Prize for this year.

The Earthshot Prize selects and nominates solutions that are breaking through innovation in sustainability. We would like to use this opportunity to increase our network opportunities and possibilities. We’ve already made good contacts with the Global South, and in particular the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center, working with partners on the ground.”

Alan Chandler, Co-Director of the Sustainability Research Institute, said “It's hugely optimistic because we're looking at possibly setting up a test plant where we can begin to work with their researchers in Belize to establish a way of bringing in local farmers and local small businesses into the production of Sugarcrete®.

“In doing so, this will create new opportunities for them for low cost and hyper low carbon construction materials, and from that start to develop supply chains which are ethically based that can bring some real benefits to local people. We can then begin to look at taking carbon out of every level of supplying materials which end up in construction,”

The project has also been incredibly beneficial for current Architecture students, who are also part of the Earthshot Prize nomination. Future students will be able to help develop the research too as part of the ongoing project, added Armor.

In addition, researchers from UEL will publish their first set of Sugarcrete®  journal papers with its partners over the coming year, alongside carrying out further research on structural, durability and acoustic properties of the constituent materials.

During the event in Singapore, the five winners of the Earthshot Prize 2023 will be awarded £1 million to help scale their environmental solutions.

The five ‘Earthshots’ are: Protect and Restore Nature, Clean our Air, Revive our Oceans, Build a Waste-free World and Fix our Climate.

The 2022 Finalists have already driven impact to repair and regenerate our planet with more than 1.5 million people benefiting directly from their solutions. Over 7,000 hectares of land and almost 2.1 million hectares of ocean have been protected or restored, while over 35,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions have been reduced, avoided or sequestered.