PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2010

MATERIAL / RECYCLING 22 PET planet insider Vol. 11 No. 09/10 www.petpla.net More than just a shelter With no organised plastic recycling in place, PET bottles can pose a garbage problem in many coun- tries. A quite unique approach to take up this chal- lenge was developed by German national Andreas Froese, who developed and successfully intro- duced new house building construction techniques using standard post-consumer PET bottles instead of conventional bricks. To date, his company Eco- Tec Environmental Solutions has realised more than 50 houses, water tanks and other structures (including a green roof “ecohouse”, a copy of a Roman aqueduct and two igloos) in Honduras, Bolivia, Colombia and India. And the structures have successfully withstood natural forces such as hurricanes and earthquakes up to magnitude 7.3. Eco-Tec System: collecting, screening, filling and finishing Instead of conventional bricks, the building system uses standard PET bottles, which are filled with rubble, soil, plastic debris, or other materials from the construction site. In a first step manual screening separates the collected filling material into usable grades. Various sizes of screen are employed to separate the material into different diameters. The finest screened material is used to fill bottles or prepare the mortar mixture for construction. Up to one kilogram of recycled debris fills a 0.6 ml bottle, while a 2.5 litre bottle can hold up to four kilograms of debris material. The collected material is then forcefully compacted during bottle filling. If the work is done in the city, foundry sand is an ideal filling material. Material with a screening thickness of less than 2 inches (5cm) in diameter is placed in the spaces between the bottles to stabilise the walls, contrib- uting to the reduced use of cement. Andreas Froese devel- oped new house building construction techniques using standard post-con- sumer PET bottles