GreenWalls

Carbon emissions during the construction of an ordinary house.

Extracting, manufacturing, and transporting raw materials for construction all run on fossil fuels, which contribute to carbon emissions to the International Environmental Agency, the production of cement for concrete contributes to a whopping 8% of carbon emissions. A further 9% is caused purely by producing and transporting materials like steel and wood. 

Greenwalls is a 3d printer made to construct houses. 3D printing houses with concrete as a filament is becoming increasingly popular in recent years due to 2 reasons. The first being it is fairly cheaper than the standard way of preparing and using cement to construct houses. Secondly, it is much faster to 3D print a house using machines instead of  building it using the usual method of labor. The unique part about our solution is that it uses fly-ash based geopolymer concrete as its printing filament. 

Recycled from fly ash, this concrete has high strength, low permeability, chemical resistance, and endurance against extreme temperatures. Unlike conventional cement, which emits carbon during production, geopolymer concrete has little emissions. This easily helps the main issues of the challenge, which is sustainable housing, and reduction of the carbon footprint. This concrete will be used to construct all the houses in our project. 

Many of the 3d printers for houses are immobile, fixed to the ground. We want to move it. And that’s why our version of the 3d printer will have wheels that are controlled by motors. This removes the laborious task of having to detach and attach the 3d printing system at different places to build many houses. You may think that wheels will reduce the stability while building the house. You are right. That is why once the 3d printer finds a spot to build a house, from its sides 4 drills will attach the contraption to the ground. Once the construction of the house is over, the drills will retract back up, making the printer mobile.  

But to make our project truly eco-friendly, the source of energy needed to drive the 3d printers must also  be renewable. Which is why the 3d printing contraption will run off solar energy obtained from the foldable solar panels at each pillar. Our plan is to let it charge during the day, so that at night time it operates at full efficiency sustainably. 

Our solution serves mainly the people of the slums in desserts, examples including Mayo Khartoum of Sudan, the Kibera slum of Nairobi Kenya and many more. Many of these slums are prone to extreme weather events, and residents lack the proper housing to endure them. With these slums being located in desert based, sunny areas, it is a big advantage for our solar based contraption. It is also these people that are in high need of sustainable, strong housing. Our solution will allow the residents to move into newly printed 3d houses within a short time frame, at a low cost heavily subsidized thanks to the cooperation of private and governmental organizations. 

As a person who grew up in India near slums, I have seen first-hand how weather extremities take a toll on the residents. With a lack of access to basic necessities and safe shelter, I have witnessed the hardships they have to go through. That is why I started this solution. Apart from reading the news on how climate change is affecting the world, especially slum residents, I also read books on the state of slums and the socio-economic actions that are needed to combat it. Therefore, as a person who is interested in solving socioeconomic problems, I am committed to working on my solution. If I do get to develop this solution, I wish to understand the needs of slum dwellers further through one on one interaction and surveys. It's the best way to know the needs of the needy.

Assuming we are able to commercialize the use of Green Walls without hassle, I expect it to cater to provide housing for at least 50000 slum dwellers within the first 2 years of implementing this solution. 

There are countless youths like me around the world who have ideas that have the potential to change the world, solve its many problems. But not all of them get a chance to display it, and we just don’t realize how many revolutionary ideas are dying every single day. Which is why I understand the importance of this chance. While thousands will have brilliant ideas, not everyone has the resources or strength to move it forward into the world. I have gotten that chance today and I wish to use it. 

Traditional construction methods are costly, slow, and high carbon emissive. 

A 3d printer can print the frame for a house within 2 weeks. Another 2 weeks to fit the frame with all the electric work and polishing would mean that a house can be built within a month. Our solution is fast. 

Our solution also uses fly ash-based geo-polymer concrete as a filament, which reduces carbon emissions by more than 70%. Our solution is green. 

Lastly, the costs of producing geopolymer concrete, and operating a 3d printer to build a house are much cheaper than conventional methods. Our solution is cheap. 

The three Cs of the solution have been tacked: Expensive, Emissive, Excessive

Within the next 5 years, I hope to help at least a million slum dwellers move to eco-green 3D-printed houses, focusing on slums like Nairobi and Mayo Khartoum. As a result, I wish to reduce carbon emissions by at least 75% compared to standard construction techniques.

Measuring our carbon emissions is a good gauge of our progress. We are also motivated by the amount of people our solution reaches out to.

The reason why many eco-friendly housing projects for slum dwellers are not being implemented well enough is due to too much friction. It is expensive, slow, and environmentally harmful to do so. Our solution solves all of those issues, which can act as a source of motivation for more enterprises to follow suit. 

1. Robotics and mechanical engineering (to facilitate the design of the 3d models and the equipment to print it out)

2. Renewable energy (To integrate solar power into the solution)

3. Material Sciences (To optimize the production of geopolymer concrete)

Integrating the feedback of people from all types of backgrounds to serve their specific needs, the slum dwellers, is how diversity will be promoted in this solution. 

The business model is seperated into 2 sections. One for the main product being the green wall printer and the fly ash filament. The governmental organisations and firms would be charged around 102k for the product and this would generate around 12k  in profits for each unit. With a subscription model  put in place, the additional fly ash supplement would be provided to them, with an extra cost of 10k. 

With a bond made with governmental organisations and firms, we would be able to secure a stable financial base and any profits made from the slum upgrade would be equally shared. Currently there are 8 organisations working on the slum upgrade project by building houses such as Mahila Housing trust and more. So the total revenue made through this model per year would be around 42 million, including the cost of the filament in the assumption that all the 8 organisations would be interested in investing in our product.

Working with venture capitalists and investors would provide our company with the necessary capital and financial assistance to manufacture the Greenwall printers. With that set, we intend on creating bonds with other  governmental organisations and companies to generate more profit to make advancements to our current model to create a more sustainable and easily accessible (product). 

Searching for potential stakeholders who share same interest through cold outreach