Additional Media
Client Situation
Al Knudson, a guy with an idea came to our office armed with his patent lawyer John Dolan in hopes of making his dreams come true. The dream...? A plastic landscaping wall block to replace concrete retaining wall blocks. So how do you make a material like commodity grade plastic, polar opposite of concrete, function in the place of concrete and finish the material to look like stone? And how can you structurally design and meet regulatory requirements for load bearing at typical wall heights? There was no shortage of challenges.
Result
The Worrell team ideated different ways to mold the product, which revealed an interesting idea to gain rigidity as well as make storage of inventory and shipping the product efficient. The resulting idea was an ingenious design of a confinement cell that enhanced both the properties of the installation and stability. Now instead of installers hauling and lifting the weight of a wall in the form of heavy blocks, a front-end loader delivers the weight to the wall in the form of crushed stone backfill into a chain linked maze of plastic load cell that integrate into the earth. All the while we were calculating the costs of plastic, fuel, weight, palette size and semi trailer capacities to determine sustainability costs by comparison to concrete.
An independent Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) affirmed that when used instead of concrete blocks, Millenia polymer wall units provide a 55 percent reduction in total environmental impact, including a 65% reduction in CO2 emissions. Using Millenia walls units in construction applications can earn up to eight LEED credit points in at least two categories. The lightweight, eco-friendly retaining wall units have been selected for listing in the GreenSpec Directory. This entrepreneurial story is an example how Worrell partnered to help found the company, find the CEO and build value into a new brand through innovative ideas. The company raised over $6 million in the first round of investment.
