From Crisis to Construction: Sargablocks Mexico
What do you do with an uncontrollable excess of seaweed polluting the beaches?
While I was traveling with my partner across Mexico, we spent for several weeks driving along the Yucatan peninsula and camping in our van on the beaches. During our morning walks on the sand, we noticed a horrible smell and began to see piles of brown seaweed spanning miles of shoreline. I found out that this phenomenon has lately been a growing environmental problem in the Caribbean waters. Tons of smelly, brown micro algae called sargassum washes up on these shores each day, choking both the coastal ecosystem as well as the tourism-based economy. As climate change continues to alter the balance of ocean life, this situation could quickly turn catastrophic. However, there are some people working to restore a symbiotic relationship between humans and nature.
One local company, BlueGreen Mexico, saw opportunity amidst the crisis to transform this excess beach sludge into construction-grade building material by mixing it with other natural materials and forming it into bricks. They call it Sargablock. BlueGreen’s founder, Omar Vazquez, didn’t only aim to address the repurposing of seaweed, but he also saw that young people in his hometown were struggling to find work opportunities and thus getting sucked into the vortex of street crime. Identifying the potential of these men to be able to rebuild their lives, Vazquez decided to employ them to fabricate and build with these seaweed bricks so they would not face the desperation of life on the streets.
As an architect with a passion for sustainable systems, I am fascinated and enamored by efforts like these. Companies such as BlueGreen Mexico are finding clever, productive alternatives to rebalance our world, both environmentally and socioeconomically, by giving both materials and people a new sense of purpose. There are now 13 beautiful brick houses built and more in the works, proving the theory that excess material can be repurposed in a scalable and sustainable way - benefiting those who need it most.
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