What’s hot? The planet with or without Habla’s eco-friendly kilns?

Ask someone on the street what industry is responsible for the most pollution and they’d probably say aviation – but what if there was another sneaky cause of CO2 output that most didn’t know about?

The offender: kilns. Many bricks have been made with centuries-old kilns that burn coal. While aviation’s CO2 emissions sit at 2.4% of the global total, brick kilns account for 2.7%.

Peter Habla, founder of Habla Zig Zag Kilns, has invented a sustainable alternative that helps brickmakers meet incoming South Asian government mandates on environmental health. This involves replacing the current carbon-intensive infrastructure with a new kind of kiln – one that incorporates technology for repurposing heat from fired bricks and using it to dry green bricks and facilitate faster fire progress. 

Join SeedLegals CEO Anthony Rose in this Founder Interview where he chats with Peter about building the next generation of kilns, designed to be safer, more efficient and less expensive than traditional models.

Key takeaways

The problem with traditional kilns

• Brickmaking has a significant carbon footprint: traditional kilns produce 2.7% of global CO₂ emissions. The kilns in South Asia targeted by Habla are known for playing a significant factor in Himalayan glacial snowmelt.
• Inefficient kilns increase costs: wasted coal makes them more expensive for owners to operate.
• Kiln pollution damages local health: it has been linked to respiratory illness and more than 50,000 deaths a year across South Asia.

Habla Kilns’ solution

• Habla seeks to replace the 300k bull’s trench kilns with their Zig Zag (HZZK) kiln technology that cuts coal burning by 40 to 50%. This includes optimised combustion and energy extraction along the kiln firing path.
• By producing kilns financed with climate capital (funding earmarked for eco projects),  the team at Habla is able to create significant returns.
• Each traditional brick kiln releases around 1600 tonnes of CO2 a year – a quarter of the 800 kilns currently in Nepal will be replaced by the end of 2030 by kilns that each release on average half the amount of CO2. 

Traction and growth

• Built in partnership with the Swiss Development Corporation and Swiss Contact, their technology was proven to be effective in South Africa and is now being scaled across South Asia where there’s huge scope to reform the infrastructure in line with new Indian and Nepalese government mandates.
• Habla are currently raising $1.6M with SAFEs, through a Singaporean holding company. This is to help deploy their first kiln on the ground in Nepal.
• Brick kilns are part of an emerging market growing at over 6% a year, so there’s significant room for the company to scale and expand its operations.