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This house is made from recycled diapers mixed into concrete

Used diapers could be a source of building materials, as they can be recycled to replace the sand normally used in concrete

By Alex Wilkins

18 May 2023

Diapers are an unlikely building material, but they work

Anjar Primasetra

Concrete made from recycled diapers instead of sand could be used to build houses, after a proof-of-principle experiment has shown that the resulting material is surprisingly sturdy.

Sand is crucial for many building materials, from concrete to plaster to glass, but demand is set to skyrocket over the coming decades and it is unclear how much sand might be left to extract, which could make it an increasingly expensive resource.

Now, Siswanti Zuraida at the University of Kitakyushu in Japan and her colleagues have developed a concrete material…

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