Sunday's
Tale: a post from the past
On
Sustainable diary last Sunday we spoke about an amazing building made
with glass bottles, and also today we decide to tell a bottle’s
story.
Plastic
bottle construction is an idea of Andreas Froese, an architect and
environmental entrepreneur. Froese developed Eco-Tec, a method to
utilize plastic (PET) bottles as “bricks” in the construction of
houses, latrines, and water tanks. It is a good idea to address the
problem by putting to use some of the million plastic water bottles
discards each day in developing nations.
The
first plastic bottle construction project in Africa was pioneered in
Uganda by an organization called Butakoola Village Association forDevelopment - BUVAD. BUVAD is located in Kayunga, a district north
of Kampala.
They
teamed up with Eco-Tec to bring bottle construction technology to
Uganda in the form of a latrine block. Students and community
members at a local primary school collected and filled bottles found
throughout the community and together they built a block of latrines
for their school. Constructed in April 2010, BUVAD’s latrine block
was the first of its kind on the continent.
Benefits
of Bottle Construction
Waste
management - A small house can use as many as 10,000 bottles, waste
that would otherwise be deposited in a landfill or burned.
Environmental
protection - Unlike “traditional” bricks, bottle bricks are not
fired, a process which uses much firewood and contributes to
deforestation.
Cost
effective - Building with bottles is typically less expensive than
building with bricks as the main construction material is trash.
Job
creation – The construction process of building with bottles is
work intensive. This means many can be involved in the process,
creating opportunities for employment and community involvement, from
collecting to filling to building. While this method would
potentially be costly in more industrialized nations, where labor is
expensive and materials are cheap, in countries like Uganda,
materials are expensive, labor is cheap, and jobs are in demand.
Shock
resistant – The plastic coating of “bottle bricks” makes them
more flexible than fired bricks. Bottle construction has greater
shock resistance and is well suited for earthquake prone areas.
Long
lasting – It is estimated that it takes a plastic bottle
approximately 300 years to decompose.
More info
website Eco-Tec
Photo credit © Aminu Abubakar
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