Better Bricks: Grantee Spotlight (Q3 2026)

The Giving Green Fund is awarding a restricted grant to Better Bricks, a research and implementation program hosted at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to measure whether a set of operational changes to brick kilns (Zigzag 2.0) persist over the long run and how the practices spread to kilns the program never trained. Brick kilns are small, informal enterprises, individually modest but collectively responsible for a large share of South Asia’s industrial emissions, and largely beyond the reach of industrial decarbonization finance. Zigzag 2.0 is a package of no-cost changes to how Bangladesh’s brick kilns operate that leads to significant emissions reductions. 

This grant sits outside our core philanthropic strategies and is funded through our Discretionary Grants program, which supports catalytic, time-sensitive work that does not map neatly onto our current strategic priorities. Research into interventions that advance both climate and development goals is also an emerging interest at Giving Green, and our initial research identified brick kiln optimization as a particularly cost-effective intervention. 

Last updated: October 2026

What Is Better Bricks?

Better Bricks is a research and implementation program working to reduce the carbon and air pollution emissions of Bangladesh’s brick industry. It is hosted at icddr,b, the primary in-country implementer, and run with Stanford University, the University of Michigan, UC Berkeley, and the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.

Its central intervention is Zigzag 2.0, a set of operational changes to zigzag kilns, the dominant kiln type in Bangladesh and across the South Asian brick belt. The changes govern how bricks are stacked and how coal is fed into the kiln, and they require no new equipment and no capital investment. By lowering coal burned per brick, they cut fuel costs and improve brick quality while reducing carbon dioxide and PM2.5 emissions, giving owners a commercial reason to adopt them.

Better Bricks trains owners and operators before and during the firing season, then returns on unannounced visits to record whether they are actually following the practices. Of Bangladesh’s roughly 8,000 kilns, about three-quarters are zigzag kilns. The program has run three phases since 2021: a pilot in Jashore District, a randomized controlled trial in Khulna Division, and an initial scale-up across Khulna and Dhaka.

What Are We Funding, and How Could It Help Address Climate Change?

We are funding Better Bricks to answer open questions about how durable Zigzag 2.0 adoption is and how the practice spreads on its own. Our grant is restricted to the project and supports three workstreams during the 2026-2027 firing season:

• A long-run adoption survey of roughly 1,000 kilns engaged through the trial and the subsequent scale-up, using unannounced visits to record whether the practices remain in place two to five years after training ended, plus 250 untrained neighboring kilns to capture organic diffusion.
• Kiln performance monitoring at 400 currently adopting kilns, measuring fuel use and brick production to calculate emissions, and testing whether the environmental benefits hold for kilns that adopted the practice without ever being trained.
• Qualitative interviews with approximately 30 kiln owners: half owners who have not adopted despite years of exposure to training, and half spillover adopters.

The pathway to emissions reductions runs through the quality of the scale-up rather than the fieldwork itself. Better Bricks is already rolling Zigzag 2.0 out beyond the divisions where it was tested, and these workstreams run alongside that rollout. If adoption persists for years rather than a single season, the emissions avoided per kiln trained are substantially larger than the program currently assumes. If spillover adopters achieve the same reductions as those trained directly, encouraging diffusion becomes a cheaper route to scale than training every kiln. Either could raise the emissions avoided per dollar as the program expands.

We remain uncertain whether Zigzag 2.0 can reach national scale through delivery partners other than the research team itself. We think establishing how durable and how contagious the practice is will shape what any delivery model would need to do.

Why Do We Think Better Bricks Will Use This Funding Well?

Zigzag 2.0 has been tested through three phases in Bangladesh: a 30-kiln pilot, a 276-kiln randomized controlled trial published as the cover story of Science in 2025, and an initial scale-up targeting more than 800 kilns between 2023 and 2025. Few interventions in this sector carry evidence of that standard.

In the Khulna trial, the team reports that 65% of kilns offered training adopted the practices, rising to 74% the following year, and that 20% of untrained control kilns adopted as well, rising to 57%. The published intention-to-treat estimates are an 11% reduction in energy demand and a 9% reduction in carbon dioxide and PM2.5 emissions, with estimates among kilns that actually adopted close to double those figures. The team also reports 10% lower fuel spending per brick, and that 99% of adopting kilns held the reductions a year after training ended.

Dr. Nina Brooks of the University of Michigan will lead the project and has researched brick kilns in Bangladesh for more than eight years. Dr. Mahbubur Rahman leads icddr,b’s Environmental Health and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) group and will oversee implementation. Dr. Stephen Luby of Stanford University will co-lead the research strategy, and Sameer Maithel, who led the development of Zigzag 2.0 and has studied brick manufacturing across South Asia for more than 30 years, serves as a technical expert.

Emissions from small, informal industrial enterprises in low- and middle-income countries remain relatively neglected in climate philanthropy, and measurement is harder to fund than the training it evaluates. Better Bricks has secured funding to begin its national scale-up—with an eye toward subsequent implementation in India—but not to establish whether the gains last. We are excited to support work we think is well placed to improve the returns on a much larger body of funded activity.

Giving Green believes that additional climate donations are likely to be most impactful when directed to our Top Climate Nonprofits. For several reasons, we may choose to recommend grants to other organizations for work that we believe is at least as impactful as grants to our top recommendations. We are highlighting this grant to offer transparency to donors to the Giving Green Fund, as well as to provide a resource for donors who are particularly interested in this impact strategy. 

This is a non-partisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes.

icddr,b is a registered nonprofit in Bangladesh.