Did you know that making bricks emits more carbon each year than air travel? It turns out that for each brick made in a kiln, 1.3 pounds of carbon dioxide are spewed into the atmosphere. With 1.23 trillion bricks made annually, those emissions add up.

Luckily, there's an architect-cum-chemist who has discovered how to make bricks out of sand, microbes, and urine. Ginger Krieg Dosier, an assistant architecture professor in the United Arab Emirates, had apparently been experimenting with growing bricks for years before she finally happened on the right combination. She still has some issues to work out in the design, but her technique could produce bricks as hard as marble!

According to Metropolis, which gave Ms. Dosier a Next Generation Design award for her work, "If Dosier's biomanufactured masonry replaced each new brick on the planet, it would reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by at least 800 million tons a year."