Plastic bottles to the rescue!

Islamabad

Did you know waste bottles can be used for construction? Yes! Houses erected from plastic bottles instead of bricks are now becoming quite popular in developing countries because of the initiative taken by certain NGO’s to promote the concept. While plastic bottles have already been used by a cold drink company to provide light in certain areas - it has been advertised on television but there is no report of how successful it has been – the idea to build houses with plastic bottles was introduced in Pakistan by an American lady, Angelika Weller who supports a children’s welfare project in KPK. For four years she has been trying to convince people to use the technique and at last someone has taken up the challenge and built an experimental room on a small plot on the outskirts of Islamabad. Abrar Ismael says after meeting Angelika last summer and learning about the concept, he has done in one year what others failed to do in four!

The bottles are filled with mud/sand and stacked lengthways then bonded with cement just like bricks. The man behind this innovative idea is a German, Andreas Froese, who is also the founder of 'ECO-TEC.’ Bottles have the following advantages over bricks and other construction materials - low cost - you know how much a bottle costs! Non-Brittle (unlike bricks); absorbs abrupt shock loads; since they are not brittle, they can take up heavy loads without failure; bio climatic; re-usable; less construction material; easy to build; green construction and the bottle brick is far more energy-efficient!

With the experimental room now a reality, the Zareef Khan Foundation in KP is the first to take a step in the right direction and has asked the builder to give them a budget and design to build their school in Peshawar with this technology. Funding is required but Pakistanis are good at giving for welfare and if this project is a success, it will be a great step forward and an incentive to others to use the technology for cheaper options in building housing units. Besides proving a cheaper option, these bottles will be put to good use when they are recycled in this manner instead of being thrown out with the garbage and taking up room in landfills.