A new innovation in technology has been introduced
into the Nigerian housing sector in the form of recycling plastic
bottles into housing. This is a boost to the plan of providing
affordable housing for all by the year 2020.
The innovative system of building with bottles was pioneered by a German
named Andreas Froese, who is also the founder of Eco-Tec.
A house was recently constructed from recycled plastic bottles in Kaduna,
making it the first state in Nigeria to have such technological display
in the housing sector. The house is constructed using earth filled
plastic bottle bricks and mud. The three- room structure is so sturdy
that it could stand for thousands of years.
The new bottle house has taken away dangerous plastic bottles wastes out
of the environment and transformed it to a more useful material. Plastic
bottles take hundreds of years to biodegrade in landfill. In Nigeria,
millions of plastic bottles are dumped into waterways and landfill each
year causing pollution, erosion, irrigation blockages and health
problems.
Katrim Macmillam launched Nigeria’s bottle recycling programme in
December. 2010. This is a progamme where used plastic bottles and their
lids are collected from hotels, restaurants, homes and offices, and so
far, thousands of bottles, which would have been thrown away are now
collected and recycled for the bottle house builds.
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According to Yahaya Ahmed, Chief Executive Officer, Development
Association for Renewable Energies (DARE), “We set out to build
energy-autonomous houses from recycled materials. In order to facilitate
the project, Andres Froesse, founder of Eco-Tec Soluciones Ambientales,
was sent to Nigeria to train local masons in the bottle building
technique”.
Chris Vassilou, the Project Manager, donated the first land for the
bottle house build. Features in the bottle house include solar powered
with fuel-sufficient clean cookstove, urine filtration fertilization
systems and water purification tanks, thereby, making it energy
autonomous.
Currently, school children are being trained in the bottle brick-making
technique. The newly trained masons will lead the build by January 2012
in the next Nigerian bottle project, which will be a school hall in
Suleja, at African School of Excellence which urgently needs classroom
space.
Advantages bottles have over bricks and other construction materials
include: Low cost; Non-Brittle; Absorbs abrupt shock loads; Bio
climatic; Re-usable; Less construction material; Easy to build and;
Green Construction.
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When you make a clay brick, the time and energy used right from mixing
the clay to baking it in the kiln and taking into account the firewood
used for that, you will see that the bottle brick is far more
energy-efficient. The technology also reduces the carbon emission that
happens during the baking of an ordinary brick.
The heat generation from cement factories can also be reduced as this
technology uses only five percent cement. The foundation for the entire
construction is obtained from building waste and so the mountains from
which granite is blasted out can be saved too. PET Bottle can last as
long as 300 years – longer than the cement used to bind the bottles
together in the walls.
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