IN Brief:
- Reclaimed Brick Company's verified EPD reports cradle-to-gate A1–A3 GWP of 20.4kg CO₂e per tonne and total lifecycle GWP of –3.18kg CO₂e per tonne.
- A separate Tunley-supported comparison supplied by the company puts the difference against a historic UK brick-industry benchmark at about 6.49tCO₂e for 30 tonnes of bricks.
- The figures strengthen the case for reuse but also require specifiers to keep lifecycle modules and comparison boundaries consistent when assessing embodied carbon.
Reclaimed Brick Company has published new comparative analysis intended to quantify the carbon advantage of reusing clay bricks, adding a house-scale comparison to the environmental data already contained in its independently verified Environmental Product Declaration.
The company worked with science-based sustainability consultancy Tunley Environmental on the analysis. For a notional house using 15,000 bricks weighing approximately 30 tonnes, the supplied comparison puts the reclaimed-brick result at about -0.10 tonnes of CO₂e and a historic UK brick-industry comparator at 6.39 tonnes, a difference of approximately 6.49 tonnes.
The comparison points in the same direction as the company’s verified EPD, but the lifecycle boundaries are not identical. Reclaimed Brick Company’s EPD reports cradle-to-gate Global Warming Potential for modules A1–A3 of 20.4kg CO₂e per tonne. It separately reports a total lifecycle GWP of -3.18kg CO₂e per tonne when the wider lifecycle and circularity assumptions used by the declaration are included.
Scaled to 30 tonnes, the EPD’s -3.18kg-per-tonne total result is approximately -0.095 tonnes of CO₂e, which rounds to the -0.10-tonne figure in the new comparison. The 20.4kg-per-tonne A1–A3 result would instead equate to about 0.61 tonnes for the same 30-tonne quantity. The distinction matters because A1–A3 and total lifecycle results are not interchangeable even when they describe the same product.
The historic-industry comparator used in the new analysis is also separate from the product-specific EPD. It illustrates the scale of the claimed difference, but any whole-life carbon assessment still needs equivalent declared units, lifecycle modules and assumptions if the comparison is to remain technically consistent.
The underlying reason reclaimed bricks can perform well is straightforward. The energy-intensive clay extraction, preparation and kiln firing took place during the brick’s first life. Reclamation involves recovering existing units, cleaning, sorting, grading, handling and transporting them for another use rather than manufacturing replacement bricks from virgin clay.
Reclaimed Brick Company’s EPD lists the material as 100% secondary content and reports processing energy of 138kWh per tonne during the A1–A3 stages. It also applies a 150-year reference service life and assumes that 70% of the material can remain reusable or recyclable at end of life.
Luke Clarke, director at Reclaimed Brick Company, said: “Reclaimed bricks have always been valued for their history and character, but this work helps us clearly demonstrate their low-carbon advantage. It gives architects, developers and homeowners verified information they can use when selecting materials for their projects.”
An EPD provides a standardised dataset that can be incorporated into whole-life carbon calculations, giving project teams a more disciplined basis for comparing material options than broad sustainability claims. The declaration does not make products directly interchangeable, but it exposes the environmental indicators and boundaries on which an assessment is based.
Reuse nevertheless introduces practical considerations that are different from specifying new units. Reclaimed bricks need to be recovered without excessive damage, cleaned and sorted, then matched to the performance and appearance requirements of the project. Depending on the application, designers may also need evidence covering compressive strength, water absorption, frost resistance and other characteristics rather than relying on age or appearance as a proxy for suitability.
Those constraints do not undermine the circular-material case; they define the work required to make reuse a repeatable construction process. The environmental benefit is strongest when recovered products can stay in service without disproportionate processing, transport or replacement, and when their performance is sufficiently documented for designers and contractors to specify them confidently.
Dr Aaron Yeardley, science team co-lead at Tunley Environmental, said: “The results show the advantage of keeping an existing construction material in use. Reclaimed bricks avoid many of the emissions associated with extracting raw materials and manufacturing new bricks, while supporting a more circular approach to construction.”
Brick is a particularly visible example because new production requires high-temperature firing, while demolition and refurbishment can release large quantities of existing units that still have service life remaining. Retaining that material can therefore affect both sides of the resource equation: reducing demand for new clay products while diverting usable masonry away from lower-value waste routes.
The broader development is the move towards quantified reuse. Retaining an existing product may avoid manufacturing impacts, but verified declarations allow that assumption to be tested within carbon models and procurement decisions rather than left as a general circular-economy claim. They also expose when apparently simple comparisons rely on different lifecycle boundaries.
The latest reclaimed-brick analysis indicates a substantial carbon advantage, but the figures are most useful when their basis remains explicit. The company’s EPD provides the verified product dataset, while the Tunley-supported comparison places that performance against a broader historic benchmark. The distinction between A1–A3 and total-lifecycle results therefore needs to remain visible wherever the figures are reused.
