We may need to ditch that aphorism about throwing stones at glass houses.
Two engineering graduate students at the University of Washington have found a way to make bricks out of recycled glass that they say are stronger, lighter and better insulators than conventional building blocks.
Renuka Prabhakar and Grant Marchelli claim their VitroBricks require 80 percent less energy to produce because they're fired at a much lower temperature for a shorter time. Most promising of all, according to the engineers, their invention can put to work the millions of tons of discarded glass that end up in landfills each year.