Patents on the soles of your shoes...: Oh, patents! FabBRICK® Projects

Monday, January 19, 2026

Oh, patents! FabBRICK® Projects

In 2023, five years after its inception, FabBRICK® had produced 152,000 bricks. A quantity of bricks that amounted to 32 tons of upcycled, used textiles. In other words, enough brick orders to justify expanding the company’s size, and to give everyone working for FabBRICK® a clear sense of doing good in the world. A positive impact on yet another serious aspect of environmental pollution, considering how much used and/or waste textiles had been given a second life in stunning wall cladding and furniture projects, such as those exemplified below.

After all, 4 to 5.8 million tons of used textiles are discarded each year, in Europe alone, a large portion of which is sold to Africa. Sales to Africa, where some 30% of the used clothing ends up in infamous landfills, because the textiles are too damaged for purchase. An environmental disaster compounded by the fact that the African used-clothing market, called the Mitumba market, also contributes to strangling local textile production, as no one can compete with used-clothing prices (Textile Mountain, 2020).