Building with waste stepped up in Africa

Plastic and glass bottles are gaining popularity as construction materials

It first started 11 years ago when Kenyan teachers and students were taking part in their coastal school's beach cleaning day.

It turned into an initiative in which collected waste was turned into building materials that are cheap and eco-friendly.

Lamu Island's Twashukuru Eco School uses plastic and glass bottles collected from the seaside, hotels and shopping centers to build facilities such as a one-story building of four classrooms and buildings for a kitchen, dining hall and washrooms.

Omar Islam, the school founder and director, said that initially only plastic bottles were used but building efforts soon added glass bottles, which produce stronger and more attractive walls.

During construction, both types of bottles are stacked together with cement and lime clay. Plastic bottles are first filled with sand to strengthen them.

Unlike bricks, Omar said recycled plastic bottles are non-brittle, bio climatic, easy to build, and it's a green construction.

The "bottle brick" technology, which started in India and Latin America, provides a cost-effective, environmentally-friendly alternative to conventional building bricks.

According to International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology, homes constructed from recycled plastic bottles are bulletproof, earthquake resistant and suitable for circular designs. And they can last for 300 years.

Twashukuru Eco School offers free pre-primary education including meals, uniforms, and stationery. It serves disadvantaged children in the area. Plans are underway to expand the school to offer primary education from class one to class eight.

Along with the basic education, pupils are taught eco-friendly environmental practices, singing, dancing, drumming, and the arts.

Using a new and a "strange" building material, especially bottles that contained alcohol, was initially met with opposition from the local community, since liquor is against the Muslim faith of a large proportion of the population.

With time, the local community understood Omar's motive and appreciated the ingenious idea. To date, both plastic and glass bottles are gaining popularity as construction materials on the island.

"I'm happy that people now appreciate the importance of recycling waste materials to keep the environment clean. I'm overjoyed to see Lamu residents embrace recycled plastic and glass bottles as a cost-effective and environmental-friendly construction material," Omar said.

The creative construction materials have also been embraced in Watamu, another Kenyan coastal region, located 150 kilometers from Lamu Island.

In an interview with Reuters last year, Sammy Baya, a resident of Watamu who has built a three-bedroom house from recycled plastic and glass bottles, said the materials cut costs by 40 percent.

Apart from Kenya, construction using plastic and glass bottles is also gaining popularity in South Africa and Nigeria.

Bottleworx, a South African company, uses a unique interlocking cubic design for its products which transforms ordinary water bottles into building material.

Once consumed, the Bottleworx bottle are upcycled into building blocks for housing, schools, clinics, beds, couches and educational toys.

The construction method starts with building a skeleton steel structure, then bottles are packed in tight rows, to fill each section of the structure's wall. The bottle walls are then plastered.

In Nigeria, engineer Yahaya Ahmed has been constructing houses using plastic bottles in efforts to address homelessness, environmental pollution, and joblessness.

Ahmed has built the first and the biggest plastic bottle house at Yelwa village, in Nigeria's northwestern region. There, empty plastic bottles are filled with sand and rubble before they are stacked and bound with nylon cord and walled up with clay and mortar.

One of Ahmed's unique handiworks is a building in Nigeria's capital Abuja that has become an attraction for both local and foreigners.