Here’s a utilitarian use for your recyclables. In Warnes, 30km from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, former lawyer Ingrid Vaca Díez is helping poor families build affordable housing using the stuff we normally throw away.
Her project, Centro Ecoagroturistico (EcoAgroTouristic Center) was born from the idea of using unwanted material to build eco-friendly houses. With six other like-minded women, she collected four thousand plastic bottles, known as pet, from friends, local schools and bountiful garbage dumps to obtain the materials needed for their work.
The bottles were filled with sand, earth or sawdust to make them hard, then bound to each other using cement, one on top of the other. When that work was completed, another coat of cement, clay or straw was applied to both sides to reinforce the wall.
Eighty-one bottles are needed to create one square meter and at least ten thousand are needed to build one small house with two bedrooms, living/dining area, kitchen and bathroom.
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Beautifully simple design: The plastic bottle light
Cut a hole in a developing world roof big enough for a plastic soda bottle to fit snugly into. Fill a bottle with water and a little bleach and set it halfway into the hole cap side up. Voila, you now have a daytime light bulb. The sunshine is diffused by the water in the bottle and kicks off the light equivalent to a 50 watt bulb that costs nothing to run. See how it works.