Production of ceramic bricks, pots, and tiles for export and local use is essentially unregulated near the northern border of Baja California, Mexico. Poverty and low profit margins make clean-burning fuels such as natural gas unaffordable for small-scale "ladrilleros," who instead fuel kilns with contaminated waste products, such as chemically treated wood scraps from furniture factories. The inefficient design of handmade kilns contributes to the use of an unnecessarily large quantity of fuel, and to emission of dense smoke at low elevation. The smoke contains high levels of particulates, volatile organic compounds, polluting gases, and chemical contaminants that contribute to local health problems and global pollution. A cleaner-burning, self-filtering kiln designed by Robert O. Marquez for the communities surrounding Cuidad Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas, improves fuel efficiency by over 50% and reduces emission of pollutants from contaminated fuels by 80%. The neighborhood of Cerro Azul, situated near Tecate, Mexico, is densely populated with small-scale brickmakers harvesting locally available clay. This community suffers from poverty that makes clean-burning fuels inaccessible, and from the health effects of brick production: for example, several kilns are situated upwind of the local school. In conjunction with the Northern Baja Secretary for Environmental Protection and a local environmental nonprofit Foundation La Puerta, we performed a survey of seventy brickmaker families in Cerro Azul. We found widespread cultural acceptance of the Marquez Kiln. We further identified four volunteers to participate in a pilot program to bring this technology from Cuidad Juarez to Cerro Azul and educate brickmakers in sustainability and kiln construction during the year 2007.