The large amount of drugs seized in Ecuador offers the Andean country a previously unseen and unimaginable building material – cocaine, Reuters reports.
Under the leadership of President Guillermo Lasso, Ecuador has stepped up its fight against drug gangs. According to the information provided by the Ecuadorian police, the amount of drugs seized in 2021, compared to the previous year, almost doubled and reached 210 tons. In 2022, the volume slightly decreased, however, there is still a lack of storage space in police warehouses. Therefore, the country has now started using cocaine as a construction material.
With the help of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC),
Ecuador uses an encapsulation method that processes drug bricks into powder, mixes them with other recyclable waste, and then mixes the resulting mass with cement, sand, and water to make concrete blocks.
Hundreds of blocks of drugs are delivered to waste processing plants near the capital Quito every week. There, drugs are recycled along with glass, expired medicine, and even oil waste. According to the UN, when the paste hardens, it forms a stable, hard, and impenetrable material.
The material produced by the Ecuadorian authorities is being used to fill a 15-meter-deep pit with layers of concrete that will later form the floor of the warehouse. This process will then be repeated in another construction pit.
Currently, there are no plans to use concrete blocks made from drugs for civil infrastructure projects.
So far, 350 tons of drugs have been used to make concrete. Pablo Ramirez, director of Ecuador’s Drug Enforcement Administration, said it takes 12 hours to burn a ton of cocaine, while three hours are enough to process cocaine into concrete. He told Reuters that recycling drugs into concrete is faster, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly.
