📌 TOPINDIATOURS Hot ai: 100% recycled plastic blocks aim to replace concrete in fl

At CES 2026, WES-Tec Global showcased a construction technology aimed at tackling plastic pollution and climate-driven infrastructure risks.

Its ECOCCUBE system converts waste plastic into durable building blocks designed for use in vulnerable environments.

The company presents ECOCCUBE as a sustainable alternative to conventional concrete for select civil engineering applications.

The solution targets coastal erosion, flooding, and structural instability while addressing plastic waste at scale.

Turning plastic into infrastructure

ECOCCUBE uses 100% recycled waste plastic as its core material. WES-Tec Global relies on a proprietary process it calls Newcycling.

The method preserves the physical properties of plastic while enabling new structural uses.

Unlike conventional recycling systems, the process accepts mixed plastic waste. It does not require sorting or washing.

A dedicated New-Cycle Factory converts discarded plastic directly into construction-grade blocks.

“Our technology is designed to recycle all types of waste plastic without sorting or washing,” a company spokesperson said during a CES interview.

The spokesperson added that the system converts plastic into civil engineering materials rather than consumer goods.

WES-Tec Global engineered ECOCCUBE for demanding environments, including coastlines, rivers, and sloped terrain.

The blocks support shoreline reinforcement and flood-resilient infrastructure.

According to the company, ECOCCUBE achieves a compressive strength of 26.4 MPa and a tensile strength of 16.7 MPa.

These figures exceed those of many conventional concrete applications.

The lighter weight also lowers transport and installation costs.

“These materials are used for coastal and infrastructure applications,” the spokesperson said.

They cited protection against erosion, earthquakes, and tsunamis as key use cases.

Climate impact and recognition

ECOCCUBE delivers measurable environmental benefits. Each kilogram of product reduces carbon emissions by 2.99 kg CO2, or about 6.6 pounds of CO2, based on lifecycle assessment data.

One 25 kg unit (about 55 pounds) results in a 74.69 kg CO2-equivalent reduction, equal to roughly 165 pounds of CO2.

The system prevents incineration, landfilling, and plastic leakage into ecosystems. It also qualifies for carbon credits and carbon storage mechanisms.

WES-Tec Global brings more than a decade of experience in concrete and civil engineering.

Its waste plastic recycling business developed more recently. “This is our first time exhibiting at CES,” the spokesperson said, adding that deployment is still in preparation stages.

The technology has already earned recognition. ECOCCUBE received honors at the CES Innovation Awards 2026 and a Silver award at the Edison Awards 2025.

WES-Tec Global is now seeking partners to scale deployment and expand its climate-focused construction model globally.

For ongoing news, in-depth reporting, and key developments from CES 2026, read the IE team’s coverage here.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 TOPINDIATOURS Update ai: Google Settles With Families Who Say It Killed Their Te

A stack of major AI ethics lawsuits against Google have finally come to an end.

According to the New York Times, the family of a deceased 14-year-old named Sewell Setzer III has agreed to settle a lawsuit against Google and the AI companion company Character.AI out of court for an undisclosed sum. In a filing submitted on Wednesday, the parties involved said they had agreed “to resolve all claims,” though the exact terms of the agreement haven’t been finalized.

Setzer’s case has dominated headlines, though his was just one of five lawsuits settled with the tech companies this week.

In summer of 2024, Google injected $3 billion into Character.AI, which hosts a virtual library of thousands of chatbot personas and soon became explosively popular with teens. But it quickly became clear that the platform was barely moderated, hosting bots modeled after child predators, school shooters, and eating disorder coaches.

In an even darker twist, Character.AI was soon connected to several youth suicides and a wave of other grisly outcomes for young people.

Following Setzer’s death, for instance, his mother discovered that his last conversation had been with an AI chatbot styled after “Game of Thrones” character Daenerys Targaryen and had revolved around suicide.

In his last messages to the bot, the Character.AI persona generated text asking Setzer to “please come home to me as soon as possible.”

“What if I told you I could come home right now?” Sewell replied. “…please do, my sweet king,” the AI responded. Soon after, Setzer took his own life with his father’s gun.

“I feel like it’s a big experiment,” Setzer’s mother, Megan Garcia, told the NYT at the time, “and my kid was just collateral damage.”

Haley Hinkle, a policy attorney at Fairplay, a nonprofit that works to promote online child safety, told the NYT not to view the settlements as the final word on the issue. “We have only just begun to see the harm that AI will cause to children if it remains unregulated,” Hinkle said.

While we don’t know what the giant tech companies offered Setzer’s family as recompense, their settlement comes a few months after Character.AI moved to ban all minors under 18 from accessing the platform.

The crackdown on minors was a significant step for the platform, since adolescents make up a huge portion of its userbase. As part of the new enforcement regime, Character.AI said it developed a new in-house tool to identify minors based on their conversations with the platform’s chatbot, and had partnered with a third-party company to verify users’ ages based on government IDs.

As far as Google and Character.AI were concerned, it’s likely they were apprehensive about a court case that would potentially expose their internal processes and communications as the bots were developed, giving both companies ample reason to offer a generous out-of-court settlement.

More on AI: A Startling Proportion of Teens Now Prefer Talking to AI Over a Real Person

The post Google Settles With Families Who Say It Killed Their Teen Children appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com