The eager participation of the students in stuffing bottles surprised us both a little bit. Do they care about the environment and had only been waiting for someone to introduce a recycling scheme, or was it because of the points towards their grades? Let’s keep good faith and believe in the first.
Following up from the success of the bench, we ventured on a second, larger and more daring project: a recycling shed to provide a constant flow of new bottle bricks. The shed has three compartments: one for inorganic rubbish, one for empty plastic bottles, and one for stuffed bottles. Once a week, a group of students stuff the rubbish into bottles. The walls of the shed are of vertically arranged bottle bricks in timber frames, held together with chicken wire. The walls can be rendered with concrete or a clay mixture. This is useful for toilets (for a bit of privacy) or to reinforce the walls. We rendered one triangle as an example. Before rendering, the spaces between the bottles should be filled with more inorganic rubbish to save cement. As photos can say more than words, here is how we did it.
Fantastic work, Friends! We totally need something like this at the site 🙂