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Coming to Middle Tennessee
Common Block

Community

Common waste. Common good.

Foam collected in Middle Tennessee, cast here, and built into homes here.

Common good

Waste is a community problem. So is housing.

Every new fridge, TV and sofa delivered in Davidson County arrives wrapped in foam. Most of it ends up in a landfill, where it takes up space for centuries. At the same time, the city needs homes that are safe, efficient and affordable to run.

Common Block connects those two problems. Foam collected here becomes walls built here, by local crews, for local families. The name says it: common waste, turned into common good.

  1. 01 →

    Neighbors & retailers

    drop off or set aside clean packaging foam

  2. 02 →

    Common Block

    will grind it and cast it into blocks in Nashville

  3. 03 →

    Local builders

    stack and pour stronger, efficient walls

  4. 04 → back to 01

    Families

    live in safer homes with lower bills

Have foam?

Businesses with clean EPS packaging: we want to collect it.

Get in touch

Building something?

Builders, nonprofits and housing groups: sign up now to pilot the first walls.

Get in touch

Want to help?

Community groups, schools and city partners: let us talk about collection drives and demonstration builds.

Get in touch

Foam by the numbers

Half a million tons of polystyrene packaging a year. Almost none of it recycled.

Polystyrene foam is light, bulky and cheap to make, which is exactly why so little of it gets recycled: shipping it is mostly shipping air. Here is the scale of the problem Common Block is built to take on.

  • 550,000tons

    of polystyrene containers and packaging generated in the US in 2018

    Source: EPA

  • 3.6%

    of that polystyrene packaging was recycled. The rest was landfilled or burned.

    Source: EPA

  • 146million tons

    of US municipal waste went to landfill in 2018: half of everything thrown away

    Source: EPA

  • ~95% air

    by volume: why foam is costly to haul and fills landfill space out of all proportion to its weight

    Source: EPS industry (95–98%)

Nashville is already collecting it.

Metro Nashville Waste Services opened Tennessee's first city drop-off that takes both foam packaging and food-service foam, at the East Convenience Center, with a densifier donated by the Polystyrene Recycling Alliance. The collection is in place. Common Block wants to be the local maker that turns it into walls.

Built to repeat

Nashville first. Then anywhere.

Foam waste isn't a Nashville problem. It turns up wherever appliances, electronics and furniture are delivered, which is everywhere. That's what makes the model portable: a small plant, local foam, local crews, local walls. Once it works here, the same playbook can be repeated in cities across the US and in other countries.

  1. 01 →

    Collect locally

    Partner with the city, retailers and job sites already producing foam.

  2. 02 →

    Cast locally

    A compact plant near the foam, so it never travels far as bulky waste.

  3. 03 →

    Build locally

    Sell to builders in the same region, keeping jobs and value in the community.

  4. 04 ↻

    Repeat

    Take the proven mix, line and playbook to the next city.

Coming to Nashville

A local loop: Nashville's waste becomes Nashville's buildings.

Nashville already collects EPS. Metro Waste Services and Foam Cycle accept and densify foam at the East Convenience Center. What's missing is someone local to turn that foam back into a product. Common Block is built to be that next step.

The city's Solid Waste Master Plan aims to divert 90% of waste from landfill, and its Climate Action Plan calls for lower-carbon buildings. We want to work with Metro, local retailers and builders so the foam collected here gets used here.

  • Retail and appliance packaging foam
  • Construction and demolition foam
  • City EPS collection programs

Who we work with

We'll make the blocks. You build.

Common Block will only manufacture. We'll sell blocks to the people who build and won't take on construction work ourselves, so we can focus on making a consistent, well-tested product.

Builders & contractors

Residential and light-commercial walls, foundations and garden walls, priced per block or per project.

Developers & architects

Specify a fire-resistant, high-R wall system that also cuts landfill waste for green building programs.

Foam sources

Retailers, distributors and job sites with clean EPS: we'd rather pick it up than see you pay to landfill it.

City & community partners

Public-private partnerships, grants and demonstration projects that keep foam out of Nashville's landfill.