Classroom shortage and garbage surplus are two sad realities our country faces. Every year, television churns out back-to-school news features of school kids crowding classrooms or taking shifts to make use of the limited space along with the figures on how many classrooms each province lacks. “We have to build new classrooms each year to keep up with increasing student population and replace ageing school buildings and those that were destroyed by calamities,” Education Secretary Armin Luistro was reported saying in the news.
Reports about garbage piling up on the streets and landfills are not new either. According to a study by the Economy and Environment Program for Southeast Asia, Manila generates over 5,000 tons of solid waste per day – almost 75 percent of which comes from households. Moreover, the study showed that waste segregation (separating plastic, paper, food scraps and so on), is not widely practiced and that the recycling of materials(save for informal door-to-door entrepreneurs) is minimal.
Unbelievable Solution
But through the efforts of My Shelter Foundation, a non-profit group aimed at finding innovative solutions to fight climate change, the problem has been converted into part of the solution itself.
How? By building classrooms from old bottles that would otherwise end up as trash. “What used to be a problem in the environment is now part of a solution,” points out social entrepreneur Illac Diaz, who spearheaded the campaign to build Asia’s first school made out of recycled plastic and glass bottles. According to Diaz, who heads My Shelter Foundation, plastic bottles are ideal materials to use in construction because of their durability and availability. The use of bottles is a traditional building technique done in other countries. “We got inspired from structures such as Spanish adobe churches and buildings that incorporate glass bottles in Turkey and Mexico, which have all withstood the test of time,” Diaz shares further.
An average plastic bottles takes roughly 300 to 500 years to decompose. Though easy enough to recycle, these are often dumped along with other types of trash by thousands and thousands of household consumers, a practice which will overwhelm landfills for the next few centuries, if left unchecked.
Construction Process
Last year, My Shelter Foundation gathered as many 1.5 to 2 liter plastic bottles with the help of volunteers as possible. They even held several “Bottle School Runs” where racers paid using plastic bottles to join the marathon. Diaz says they chose soda bottles because these could be easily sourced from restaurants and hotels, the organizers transported all of these to the donated school site in San Pablo, Laguna, which is roughly a two-hour drive from Manila.
Dozens of volunteers helped in the construction process, which involved filling the plastic bottles with liquefied adobe to make the basic “bricks” for the school. The bottles cement holding the bottles in place and making the wall sturdier. Diaz says that the bottle bricks are actually three to four times stronger than conventional hollow blocks. Even construction workers on the site attest to the bottle school’s durability. Even though they had never built anything like it before, one worker said that the building was very strong and could withstand rain, typhoons an earthquakes better that traditional classrooms.
Rum Bottles, Corn Husk Boards Also Used
It took roughly 5,000 bottles to complete on classroom, which can seat roughly 40 students. In each finished classroom, two facing walls incorporate small holes and PVC pipes in between the bottle brick walls for better ventilation and for reducing the need for electric fans.
Instead of windows on facing walls, the building makes use of translucent rum bottles on the rafters surrounding a wide entrance to maximize natural light.
A panel board made of bamboo fiber, corn husk, and rice hull, which Diaz says are sourced locally, are used towards the back of the classroom, while the roof will incorporate recycled tetra packs to reflect more light into the room. Aside from the use of bottles and fiberboards, even the cement binding the bottles together makes use of sustainable materials.
Diaz explains that workers mix human hair and chicken feathers, which they source from barber shops and poultry farms in the area, as fiber filler to hold cement together, since cement mixed with fiber was found to experience 95 percent less cracking.
It took roughly a month to finish constructing the first of eight planned classrooms, which they only began in December of last year. As of mid-March, My Shelter Foundation was in the process of gathering the remaining 35,000 bottles needed for the rest of the classrooms, which they aimed to finish in time for the opening of classes this June.
Other Notable Works
My Shelter Foundation has proven track record in building sustainable, eco-friendly, low-cost, disaster-resistant structures. They were the pioneer group behind the Design Against the Elements (DAtE) architectural village, which will actually be built in Quezon City to benefit marginalized families.
In one community in Surigao, students have replaced their makeshift nipa hut classrooms with “Earthen Schools” made mostly from packed soil, which are sturdy and easily made by local workers. The innovative construction is said to cost 40 percent less than conventional classrooms and can be put up easily in less time.
Meanwhile, the first school in the Philippines made mostly of bamboo and supported by steel and reinforced concrete stands in Barangay Nato, Sagnay, Camarines Sur. Classrooms there are said to be built to withstand gusty winds of over 150 miles per hour, in an area typically known for being battered by strong typhoons year after year.
One of their latest projects, called a “Liter of Light,” uses bulbs made out of plastic bottles and chemicals to provide alternative light to shanty communities in a bid to lower electricity bills and reduce the incidence of fires commonly cause by candles.
Source: Enrich Magazine
