Two female engineers from the Gaza Strip have invented a new alternative to concrete made from coal ash which they hope could be a solution to the area’s materials shortage.
‘Green Cake’, though it looks like ordinary concrete, is ‘green’ because it is environmentally friendly in re-using coal ash, and dubbed ‘cake’ because it is much lighter than concrete.
It is also 25 per cent cheaper than normal concrete blocks.
The substance is the invention of Majd Mashhrawi and Rawan Abdullatif, both in their twenties and graduates of the civil engineering programme at Gaza Islamic University.
The blockade on Gaza has been in place since Hamas took over the area in 2006, making it difficult for Palestinians to import cement mixture and other necessary building materials because of Israeli fears they could have a ‘dual use’ in creating tunnels used by militants.
The July 2014 war, which the UN estimates destroyed 17,000 homes, exacerbated the situation.
The duo began exploring alternatives to concrete in 2015, with the goal of finding a locally sourced alternative to cement. After extensive testing on different mixtures of aggregates, sand, and ash to check for the ability to withstand weight, gravity, fire, rain, they settled on the product that became known as Green Cake.
The project got off the ground with a grant from the university, and by August 2016 Ms Mashhrawi and Ms Abdullatif had been commissioned by their first client.
While there is no real alternative to cement that is as strong, and it is not yet known whether Green Cake will be prove to be durable over the course of several years, it has still been hailed as an innovative measure to tackle Gaza’s unique construction challenges.
Ms Mashhrawi said she hopes the company will gain enough momentum to allow her to open a factory and create jobs as well as lessen Gaza’s dependence on outside construction materials.
“Green Cake is good as long as we care about the process of constantly improving it,” she told Middle East Eye. “We are still in the early days but I am hopeful."
