How to Turn 8,000 Plastic Bottles Into a Building
Peace Corps volunteer Laura Kutner demonstrates how she turned trash into the building blocks for one community's revival
- By Arcynta Ali Childs
- Smithsonian magazine, June 2011, Subscribe
Laura Kutner wants your trash—specifically, your plastic bottles. And, if you can spare some time, she’d like your help using those bottles to build a wall.
The construction project, which will commence at this summer’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival (June 30-July 4 and July 7-11), is part of a celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps. Kutner, 26, will be giving visitors to the National Mall an opportunity to recreate a project she led in Granados, a poor community in the mountainous region of Baja Verapaz, Guatemala.
When Kutner arrived there as a volunteer in July 2007, the area was known for three things: its marble production, ample fields of corn and an abundance of garbage. “Community members were fantastic about reusing items,” she says. But with a single dump nearby and few ways of getting trash to it, heavy buildup was a recurring problem.
Sitting outdoors with a group of students one day, Kutner was drinking from a soda bottle and...Eureka! “I realized that the plastic bottle I was holding was the exact width of the metal frame that was sitting outside the school,” she says, referring to a previous building project that had run out of funds. Kutner had read about communities elsewhere in Latin America using plastic bottles stuffed with compacted trash as building material. Perhaps, Kutner thought, the rest of the schoolhouse wall could be contructed using the same technique, but with the addition of steel rods to provide extra reinforcement.
Local engineers gave the plan their stamp of approval. “The idea that we could create this structure out of the waste that is lying around on the ground and not need as many funds as we would with traditional blocks was very appealing,” Kutner says. “Everyone in the community loved it.” Then the work began.
Bottles measuring 600 milliliters (about 20 fluid ounces) had to be collected, cleaned and stored. Kutner and school principal Reyna Ortiz held workshops to explain what trash should stuff the bottles—no biodegradables, like paper and cardboard—just plastic and aluminum wrappers. Ortiz required each student to fill 20 bottles and awarded points for completion. When the students exhausted all the trash in Granados, they went to neighboring villages to gather more. In all, they filled some 8,000 bottles. And on Valentine’s Day 2009, construction of the wall began.
The workers started by filling metal frames—each measuring ten square feet—with bottles encased between sheets of chicken wire. Then they fastened together the front and back sides of the wire and covered the outside with concrete. Though Kutner was reassigned to San Miguel Dueñas, a town four hours south, just as the project was nearly completed, she was able to travel back and forth to see it through to the end. And in October 2009, the wall was finished. Since then, ten more schools have been built in Guatemala using the plastic bottle technique.
Kutner, who now lives in Oregon and plans to begin a graduate program in international development in the fall, says the Peace Corps is one of the few organizations “that really gets development work right. They teach you that if development work is going to be sustainable, it has to come from the community.”
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Comments (5)
The article is very wonderful. You analyse in the round. I will go on to attention your other wonderful posts. Thank you.
Posted by winpromote.com on September 29,2011 | 05:22 AM
there are many photos of the bottle school in granados / just google " Granados bottle school" and you will see the whole project in photos. its amazing. .... from her proud aunt!
Posted by joni kutner on June 1,2011 | 11:05 PM
There are several other simple methods to build with trash. Earthships was the first whole-house building system, using tires for exterior walls. http://earthship.net/construction-materials Ubuntu-blox create a thinner walled house, using a hand press to compress and bale plastics (including non-recyclable foams and films) into an 8 x 16 inch bale.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/home.php?sk=group_187871164581331&ap=1
And I'm working on a method called Hyper-wattle that doesn't require as much metal, or a press. Plastic mesh tubing can be filled firmly with plastic trash, sewn together, and then stiffened with earthen plaster that contains a lot of straw.
Ubuntu and Hyper-wattle can both be seen at the $300 house contest website. Sign on and vote for recycled buildings until May 31.
Posted by Patti Stouter on May 29,2011 | 08:03 AM
My Spanish classes read the ebook on the Peace Corps site http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/multimedia/ebooks/bottle_school/
The story is inspirational in many ways.
Posted by Evelyn on May 28,2011 | 05:42 PM
I am a second grade teacher. Our class just studied about recycling, specifically recycling plastic bottles. Are there any more pictures about this project available? My students will be very excited to see what is currently being done with recycling!
Posted by Babette Holiday on May 21,2011 | 06:01 PM