With all our posts about eco-bricking – many of you may be wondering what that is. To date, we have completed two different eco-bricking projects and are in the process of finishing up one building project. Have a look below to see how it all works.
Eco Bricks are PET bottles filled with soft plastics. Stuffed to the brim with cellophane, chip packets, sweet wrappers and everything that can’t easily be recycled. The bottle is screwed closed and then used as a building brick. Each eco-brick weighs approximately .3KG. So if you calculate how many eco-bricks we have made multiplied by the weight of each eco-brick, we have used 1,269.6 KG of waste to build with. It s quite amazing to know that that waste is not sitting in a land fill site or destroying the environment. Instead – this waste is serving a purpose.
Chicken Coop: completed. 800 ecobricks used
Piggery: completed 432 ecobricks used
Compost Bin: in progress. 3,000 used thus far
But don’t be mistaken – it is not only The Happy Africa Foundation that is doing the work. Of the local community members, there are 98 locals at Linda Farm helping and 10 students from Linda Community School. We have several community members who have been helping us out as well just to clean their environment. African Impact volunteers eco-brick every week, multiple times a week. As a group we collectively meet once a week and on average we complete 1-2 eco-bricks per person. Additionally, once a week we collect rubbish from Linda Farm and eco-brick with the community members at the Farm.
Eco-bricking directly impacts the environment and the community.It alleviates pressure from landfills and reduces the need for burning. Ecobricks also help to clean up the streets in compounds and cities as well as teaching residents that the trash littering their streets does actually hold value.
It has drastically changed the environment of Linda Farm reducing the amount of waste and providing a sustainable material for building. The amount of rubbish that is collected weekly, greatly helps maintain a clean and safe environment for all the community members.