--- title: This Company Builds Housing Materials Out of Plastic Waste description: African start-up Kubik makes building materials out of hard-to-recycle plastic for affordable housing projects. canonical: https://time.com/6959259/affordable-homes-plastic-waste-kubik/ author: Lisa Nho article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-03-25T11:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:53:17.288Z article:section: Climate og:title: This Company Builds Housing Materials Out of Plastic Waste og:description: African start-up Kubik makes building materials out of hard-to-recycle plastic for affordable housing projects. og:url: https://time.com/6959259/affordable-homes-plastic-waste-kubik/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt02e3eb43ff36f6c2/698a55809d83e822f3b99f37/3_THUMBNAIL.00_00_00_22.Still002.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1920 og:image:height: 1080 og:image:alt: 3_THUMBNAIL.00_00_00_22.Still002 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This Company Builds Housing Materials Out of Plastic Waste twitter:description: African start-up Kubik makes building materials out of hard-to-recycle plastic for affordable housing projects. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt02e3eb43ff36f6c2/698a55809d83e822f3b99f37/3_THUMBNAIL.00_00_00_22.Still002.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # Building Affordable Homes Out of Plastic Waste > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=a4f6b42f-217c-43df-9d58-e4bc969751fe&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Building Affordable Homes Out of Plastic Waste [Watch (HLS stream): Building Affordable Homes Out of Plastic Waste](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ZPma3wW2.m3u8) (4:24)  _Published 2024-03-21. With a growing population of over 120 million inhabitants, Ethiopia sees an estimated total consumption of plastic waste of around 400 million kilos every year. Kubik is a start-up based in Africa that makes building materials out of recycled plastic for affordable housing projects while reducing their carbon and plastic footprint._ Mar 25, 2024 11:00 AM UTC by [Lisa Nho](https://time.com/author/lisa-nho/) ## Lisa Nho Mar 25, 2024 11:00 AM UTC With a growing population of over 120 million inhabitants, Ethiopia sees an estimated total consumption of plastic waste of around 400 million kilos every year. Kubik is a start-up based in Africa that makes building materials out of recycled plastic for affordable housing projects while reducing their carbon and plastic footprint. ## Transcript Affordable housing is a global problem population. That means the pressure on finding solutions that are affordable sustainable and easy to deploy is the shipping fee. Text you back. We turn hard to recycle plastic waste into building materials clinics. It's a construction material because the cost of construction on. So with our products were aiming to bring down the cost of construction up to 40% on a project. A lot of construction revolves around cement and concrete cement production and its own consumes a lot of energy and also has high carbon and a solution to this is alternative sustainable materials and our materials sustainable because we're replacing plastic and we're also reducing the need for these traditional construction materials. Therefore reducing the carbon emission. We're building dignity through clean and affordable living for all we're cleaning the environment repurposing plastic. We're also reducing carbon emission all the while making durable and lightweight construction materials in terms of catching up. Where are growing as measured by gross domestic product. But at the same time we're producing us the Saudi economy that has the ability to do forty-five thousand kilos per day. If you'd look at that amounts to roughly translates into 14 million or so. She doesn't hear if you look at just a total consumption of plastic waste in in Ethiopia gangster estimated to be close to four hundred million kilos of plastic. So even with one facility, that's fully operational. It's only touching the faction of plastic that's being created and like I mentioned earlier in his consumption has just really started. So if you take that there's a lot of opportunities to defend countries such as Kenya Tanzania similar issues so far and looks our product produces CO2 emissions significantly, you have the built environment with energy use and construction combined. It's more than 40% of all steel and construction loan. So she has the product such as cubic that's 80% more efficient in terms of the CO2 impact. Then you have the potential of your cutting steel too much about the country. What does that mean for an individual rights at becomes very difficult to understand what time what one ton of Steel to us? But I think most people have a very good mental model of what one time of plastic looks like red and it's a lot more approachable. So I think that's in plastic as gluten is actually something we're going to see a big person in the next few years, even from the public has practice. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6959259/affordable-homes-plastic-waste-kubik/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6959259/affordable-homes-plastic-waste-kubik/"},"headline":"Building Affordable Homes Out of Plastic Waste","datePublished":"2024-03-25T11:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:53:17.288Z","description":"African start-up Kubik makes building materials out of hard-to-recycle plastic for affordable housing projects.","url":"https://time.com/6959259/affordable-homes-plastic-waste-kubik/","keywords":["climate","Tech","climate change","Sustainability","sponsorshipblock","FuturesDeloitte","Futures","2030 Sustainability","Futures Innovative"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt02e3eb43ff36f6c2/698a55809d83e822f3b99f37/3_THUMBNAIL.00_00_00_22.Still002.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lisa Nho","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/lisa-nho/"}],"articleSection":"Climate","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt02e3eb43ff36f6c2/698a55809d83e822f3b99f37/3_THUMBNAIL.00_00_00_22.Still002.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"3_THUMBNAIL.00_00_00_22.Still002","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/climate/","name":"Climate"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/climate/","name":"climate"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6959259/affordable-homes-plastic-waste-kubik/","name":"Building Affordable Homes Out of Plastic Waste"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Building Affordable Homes Out of Plastic Waste","description":"With a growing population of over 120 million inhabitants, Ethiopia sees an estimated total consumption of plastic waste of around 400 million kilos every year. 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