The Bottle Innovations

          Drinking liquid content only from a bottle is one thing and proper disposal or reuse of the empty bottles is another thing.
Rather than throwing these empty bottles indiscriminately on our streets, drainage, canals and creating future problem to the environment and endangering the ecosystem.

         Could it have been wonderful to put these empty bottles into use, that will of great benefits to us.
        A German citizen name Andreas Froese founder of "Eco-Tec" aound 2001 introduced a technology called " BOTTLE BRICKS". This technique application is done in India, central and south America. This technology is building houses using empty plastic bottles.

Materials
            Materials involved in this technology are empty plastic bottles, dry sand or construction waste, binder mixture ( earth, clay, sawdust, and little cement) and cement.

Construction Methods
           The empty plastics bottles are filled with dry sand or construction waste. and it is placed on the binder mixture (which forms a bed) like rows of blocks or bricks, while the gaps between bottles are filled with rubble and cement to form a solid wall. The bottles are aligned in straight or curve lines with the help of a twine tied around the neck of the bottles when laid.

building in construction

The bottles been aligned in straight or curve lines

 

Benefits
      The structure is well insulated.
      It is inexpensive to construct compare to the structure made from concretes and block or brick.
      It is 20 times stronger than bricks because of the compacted sand inside the bottles and as such, it is said to resist both bullets and earthquake.
      In hot climate region, this type of building is best, this is because the "bottle bricks" buffers the house from intense heat.
      The bottle brick is fireproof.

               In Africa, the first bottle brick structure was built in Sabon Yelwa village in the Northern part on Nigeria.  So when next you are enjoying your refreshing liquid content from a bottle, think innovation.

           more innovation using bottles:

The Eco Ark Exhibition Hall
            This is a building in Taiwan, it was designed by a Taiwan based engineer name Arthur Huang. He formed a honeycomb shape "brick" using 1.5 million of plastic bottles.
This was for a boat shaped exhibition hall called the EcoArck"

La Casa de Botellos, Argentina
           In Puerto Iguazu, Argentina a family name Alfredo Santa Cruz constructed their home with pet plastics bottles from the exterior to the interior. their made thier steps and platform with bottles.

Plastic Bottle School, San Pablo Philippines
           This school is been built with the " bottle bricks" technology and combined with wood and concrete pillar and beams.

Morimoto Restaurant Bottle Wall, New York
   The Morimoto restaurant, has a "bottle wall" designed by Architect Tadao Ando. It serves has a space divider and aesthetic. This " bottle wall" is made up of 17,400 half liter of plastic bottles. These plastic bottles are filled with mineral water, and to have a shimmery effect a LED lighting was included.

Danone Bottle Wall Tokyo
   Danone is a company into water business. The architect, Klein Dytham introduced in the interior the plastic bottle wall. empty plastic bottles were stacked vertically and tied on wires from the floor to the ceiling to achieve a translucent room divider.

photo credits: web ecoist, Andrea Froese, BBC Africa, www.purbelinew.com, Stephanie Yung