Who can resist an email headed 'From bowel to trowel'? Not me.

As a result, I now know and can pass on, news of the latest product from my home city Leeds, whose ability to turn a penny from anything has long overtaken that of Birmingham, the rival workshop of the world.

The newcomer to the market? Bricks made from sewage, which Yorkshire Water and Leeds University have developed at the vast works in Knostrop, in gentler times the home of our famous moonlight painter Atkinson Grimshaw.

The innocent-looking blocks combine ash from incinerated sewage with vegetable oil to make bricks which are classified as carbon-negative because the oil comes from plants which have sucked out C02 from the atmosphere.

You might get a whole street out of this. Photograph Jason Hawkes / Getty

They don't smell and they are sturdy, like an earlier form of breeze block designed at the equally vast Esholt sewage works, just down the road from my house. This has long been a centre of innovation; in Bradford's heyday the wool-waste was pressed to squeeze out lanolin which was then sold to women's cosmetic companies. Poo.

The university spin-out company Encos specialises in alternatives to traditional building methods, with the holy grail of replacing traditional cement which they say causes some five percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. For Yorkshire people, this is a fascinating turn of the wheel; the inventor of Portland cement, Joseph Aspdin, was a bricklayer's son from Leeds.

Jon Brigg, Innovation Development Manager at Yorkshire Water says:

We are always looking for ways in which we can make the best use of our waste to have a positive impact on our environment and this project is a great way to reuse incinerated sludge ash which has traditionally been sent to landfill. With new building regulations coming into force in the next few years home builders will need to reduce the embedded carbon cost of all new homes - the bricks and blocks will provide a perfect alternative to traditional house bricks.

Yorkshire Water has had its share of brickbats in the past for leaking pipes et al, but this is not its first down-to-earth service to mankind. The embarrassment for sensitive souls of asking for tap water in expensive restaurants ceased to be a problem in the county, after YW's blanket advertising campaign with the slogan: 'Yorkshire Water – ask for it by name.'