Three eco champions have launched a brick revolution in Jedburgh

PegtoG bricks, which come with locking components, have been compared to giant Lego blocks.

Made entirely from recycled plastics and available in a variety of colours the hugely versatile bricks can be used to make anything from outdoor storage sheds to children’s play houses, planters, horse jumps and for use in ditch reinforcement.

The three men behind the project are retired schoolteacher Andrew Napier, furloughed engineer Charlie Richardson and recycling pioneer Larry Smith, the trio behind Hawick-based LA Regenerates.

The PegtoG operation is currently based at Old Station Yard, opposite the Edinburgh Woollen Mills in Edinburgh Road.

Larry, 78, who formally retired 15 years ago, but who keeps working “for the grandkids”, said: “In the first conversation with Andrew on the golf course I put the idea in his head and I said ‘now can you do the drawings’. He did the drawings and we took it on from there.

"We had a guy in the other day who went away with 200 bricks and he has two seven or eight year old children and he said they’ll have more fun than him building things. He wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do with them.

"It could be used as a children’s educational tool as well as for outdoor structures. It’s whatever Joe Bloggs with an imagination wants to do with them.”

Larry, who had worked with Charlie at Mainetti in Jedburgh, added: “I started off the first recycling plant in Charlesfield at St Boswells over 20 years ago and when I retired I always thought there wasn’t enough things being used to recycle plastics so I developed a brick, designed a brick, and sent the designs through to Portugal and they came back re-sophisticated. It’s taken us five years in research and development to get the brick to the stage it is now and that we’re very happy with.

"It is 100 per cent made of recycled plastics and it is 100 per cent recyclable. We’re selling the bricks mostly to people who want to build their own things. The idea of the bricks is that Joe Bloggs can build with it, you don’t need special qualities.

"The easiest way to describe it is Lego but it’s not Lego because you can actually build things that are really strong. You can fill it with concrete, you can knock the peg in and put the next brick on top of it and seal it together.

"You can make mainly outside structures, you could do room dividers and things like that but at the moment it’s mainly landscaping and we’re making lots of flower pots for people,

"The beauty of this brick is that if you want to peg it together and in two years down the line you don’t want what you built you can take it to bits and build something else. It’s not like concrete and cement that you have to knock hell out of to get it down. This you can re-use as many times as you like.

"It will take off. I am fully confident of that.”

To find out more go to [email protected] or call 07759 914 841.