How Aurangabad Girls Made A House Out Of 16,000 Plastic Bottles

Waste bottles for construction? Yes, it is difficult to think of a bottle as a brick. However, two young girls from Aurangabad have turned the prospect into a reality. Namita Kapale and Kalyani Bharmbe built an eco-friendly house through the ecobrick concept in a small town of Sharnapur near Aurangabad.

Namita and Kalyani are pursuing Fine Arts at the Government College. The inspiration to build an eco-friendly house struck during the lockdown while endlessly scrolling on the Internet. The girls also cite Akshar School, a private school located in Assam, India, as an inspiration for their project. The school allows students from low-income families to receive a quality education in exchange for plastic waste.

Wife and husband Parmita Sarma and Mazin Mukhtar founded the school in 2016. They were tired of smelling burnt plastic and toxic waste in their classrooms, produced by families living nearby their school trying to eliminate waste. The couple then decided to ask the students at their school to pay their tuition in the form of plastic waste.

Aurangabad girls build a plastic bottle house

The quest to build the house began in 2021 when the duo started collecting plastic bottles lying on the streets. In this effort, they collected 16 thousand bottles. Initially, they made eco-bricks using soil, non-biodegradable plastic waste and bamboo. The bricks of the bottles were stacked on top of each other and plastered with a mixture of soil and dung. The roof was built with the help of bamboo and wood, while doors and windows were made of wood. The house is nearly 4 thousand square feet. The entire construction cost them around seven lakh rupees. This unique experiment shows a great way to minimise plastic waste.

Meanwhile, one tiny island off of Panama offers an eco-friendly and super stylish alternative to traditional waste disposal. Isla Colon in the Bocas del Toro archipelago contains the world's first Plastic Bottle Village.

Canadian Robert Bezeau developed the project after moving to the Bocas islands several years ago. He said he started the village after noticing disturbing amounts of plastic strewn across the island's beaches. After a year and a half of cleaning, he said he had to find a way to use them and realised that he would use them as a building material for new generation housing, aptly dubbed the Plastic Bottle Village.

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