BPP Partnership Impact Series: Scaling the production of affordable, safe and eco-friendly bricks in Nepal

Since its launch, the Business Partnerships Platform (BPP) has worked with ambitious partners to deliver meaningful, lasting change in communities across the world. Our new BPP Partnership Impact Series celebrates outcomes and lessons from our partnerships, highlighting their contributions to inclusive economic growth, resilience and sustainable development.

We begin the series with our COVID-19 Recovery partnerships in Nepal, which concluded in 2024. These partnerships were established in response to the urgent social and economic impacts of the pandemic and have delivered valuable results across healthcare, livelihoods and supply chains.

Building for the future

In Nepal, an impactful BPP partnership between Build up Nepal Engineering, S&S Management Services, Engineers Without Borders Sweden and the Australian Government has been supporting rural entrepreneurs to produce affordable, safe and eco-friendly bricks since 2021.

This partnership has helped create resilient incomes and safe housing for low-income families, women, migrants and young people.

By the time the partnership closed in 2024, it had supported around 200 micro-enterprises to construct 3,800 homes using 12.7 million bricks, which are cheaper, more disaster resistant and better for the environment.

While the BPP partnership has formally concluded, the initiative continues to go from strength to strength, delivering sustainable impact in rural communities across Nepal.

About the partnership

Nepal is one of the most seismically active regions in the world, with a large construction industry requiring robust building materials to withstand earthquakes. The expense and availability of building supplies has meant half the homes in Nepal do not meet safe housing standards, impacting millions of people.

The pollution from building materials is responsible for generating 37 per cent of Nepal’s CO2 emissions, as well as other forms of pollution.

The partnership has been supporting a cleaner, greener future for Nepal by introducing brick-making machines to rural areas, making eco-friendly, durable and affordable technology more accessible to local entrepreneurs.  

The partnership also coordinates training, quality control and support for entrepreneurs keen to start their own eco-brick businesses, including for young people, women, disadvantaged groups and migrants. This creates jobs, safe housing and opportunities for low-income families.

Impact

During the BPP partnership period, the impact included:

• More local jobs – a total of 1,356 people trained and employed across almost 200 eco-brick businesses, including 325 women.
• Better housing – more than 3,800 disaster-resilient homes constructed. This is almost double the predicted partnership target of 2,000 homes.
• Improved quality control – more government engineers trained, training videos for masons instead of printed manuals and low-cost compression testing machines.
• Cutting carbon emissions – more than 38,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide saved from sustainable construction processes.
• Cheaper, greener building supplies – more than USD $5,740,500 in construction costs saved thanks to the use of more than 12.7million locally-produced eco-bricks.

Built to last: bricks that withstand earthquakes

The partnership has played a critical role in the response to the 2023 Jajarkot earthquake, which killed 150 people, and left 250,000 people homeless.

As eco-bricks are more earthquake resilient, projects already completed were undamaged by the earthquake – even those which were close to the epicentre. This meant more locals had secure structures to shelter in, saving many lives. 

The partnership is now aiming to train 5,000 local masons and 1,000 government engineers to help rebuild more than 10,000 homes in Jajarkot over the next five years – saving 95,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and creating 3,000 local jobs.

Not only are the eco-bricks more earthquake resilient, but they are also 40 per cent cheaper than traditional fired bricks making them a more affordable choice for those faced with rebuilding.

A new type of eco-brick is also in development for use in foundation works and flood prone areas, further improving long-term disaster resilience. 

View the full partnership impact story below or download here.