Oxara AG
c/o ETH hoenggerberg, ieLab, HPL D 16.2, Otto-Stern Weg 7
8093 Zürich
landrou@oxara.ch
www.oxara.ch
Transforming Excavation Materials Into Sustainable Building Products
Every building project starts with digging out tons of dirt and there is not enough landfill space for this excavation waste. Plus, there is a shortage of concrete needed for building. Oxara developed a chemical mixture that turns excavation waste into eco-friendly building material. This saves the building industry millions in landfill costs and provides it with enough sustainable material for construction.
The construction industry accounts for 30% of global CO2 emissions, 1/3 of global energy consumption and 50% of waste generated. Specifically, to build homes:
- We manufacture cement, responsible for 8% of global CO2 emissions.
- We need billions of tons of sand per year to produce concrete. Sand and gravels are getting scarce around large cities, driving up the price of concrete.
- We landfill tons of excavation materials each year, which uses up limited landfill space.
Furthermore, there is an increasing demand for affordable housing worldwide.
Oxara developed three sets of safe, mineral additives which transform excavation material into three types of sustainable and cement-free building materials. For example, Oxara’s cement-free concrete is 60% cheaper and 90% more eco-friendly than conventional concrete. The other two products are bricks and liquid soil.
The ETH-spinoff’s additives could facilitate the replacement of up to 25% of the total amount of construction material in a house currently occupied by fired clay bricks or low-performance concrete elements. This market is estimated at CHF 160 Mio in Switzerland and at CHF 4 Billion in the EU.
Oxara’s sustainable solutions contribute to tackling the affordable housing problem and help reduce global CO2 emissions, construction waste and the depletion of sand.