This 2 bedroom house in Nigeria is built from recycled plastic bottles, sand, and mud. It is bulletproof, fireproof, and can withstand earthquakes. Oh, and it also reportedly holds a comfortable year-round temperature of 64 degrees F.
Andreas Froese | ECOTEC
“…the nearly-complete home is bullet and fireproof, earthquake resistant, and maintains a comfortable interior temperature of 64 degrees fahrenheit year round!…” ~Inhabitat
A group of activists initiated this project to help solve two of Nigeria’s biggest problems: rampant plastic waste and housing shortages. The prototype house is 624 square feet with two bedrooms. It will be used to train masons how to build similar structures.
The bottles are filled with sand and weigh about 2 pounds each. They are stacked in layers, held in place with mud and cement, and the necks are tied together with a network of strings. The resulting walls are supposedly stronger than those built of cinder blocks.
Andreas Froese | ECOTEC
“This is the first house in Africa built from bottles, which could go a long way in solving Nigeria’s huge housing need and cleaning the badly polluted environment.” – project initiator Christopher Vassiliu, via Phys.org
The United States uses 129.6 Million plastic bottles per day! That’s 47.3 Billion plastic bottles per year. About 80% of those plastic bottles end up in a landfill!
- 1500 plastic bottles per second
- 60 seconds per minute X 60 minutes = 3600 seconds per hour
- 3600 seconds X 24 hours per day = 86400 seconds per day
- 1500 plastic bottles per second X 86400 seconds per day = 129,600,000 plastic bottles per day
- 47.3 Billion plastic bottles per year
The article states it took about 14,000 bottles to build this home.
The United States throws away enough plastic bottles to build 9257 of these 2 bedroom houses per day!
That’s 3.37 MILLION homes per year that could be built using recycled plastic bottles!
Adobe/daviles
Just as a side note, there are approximately 3.5 million homeless people in the United States. Makes you think a little about recycling more now doesn’t it?
These homes can be built at a fraction of the cost of traditional houses, and they can be built all over the world.
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References:
via: http://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/nigeria-plastic-bottle-house.html
via: http://inhabitat.com/africas-first-plastic-bottle-house-rises-in-nigeria/
via: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14722179
