The Earth Plus Plastic

October 12, 2015

“The planet will be here and we’ll be long gone…
And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well,
the planet will simply incorporate plastic
into a new paradigm:
‘The Earth Plus Plastic’…
Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us
to be spawned from it in the first place.
It wanted plastic for itself,
didn’t know how to make it,
needed us.
Could be the answer to our age-old,
egocentric, philosophical question;
‘Why are we here?’.”
~ George Carlin

House in Bolivia built from PET bottles, dirt and debris.

 

Houses made from discarded plastic and/or glass bottles, like the one pictured above, are currently being built in countries all over the world by innovative architects and locals, addressing housing shortages while reducing waste.  Projects in Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Senegal, Uganda, Nigeria, Germany, Serbia and the United States also include schoolhouses, greenhouses, guest houses, water storage tanks, aqueducts, sculptures and churches.

A two-bedroom plastic house requires about 14,000 discarded bottles to complete.  If that sounds like a lot, ponder these numbers:

1500 plastic water bottles are consumed every second here in the U.S.

Out of the 50 billion bottles of water being bought each year, 80% will end up in a landfill, in spite of existing recycling programs.

17 million barrels of oil are used in the production of plastic water bottles each year.

In Nigeria, where 3 million plastic bottles are thrown away daily, there is a 16 million home housing shortage.  These innovative plastic bottle houses are helping to address that shortage.

The walls of the two-bedroom bottle houses are built using bottles filled with sand and held together with mud and cement.  This type of wall is stronger than cinder blocks and makes these homes bulletproof, fireproof and earthquake-safe, in addition to maintaining a comfortable indoor temperature year-round.  Plastic bottle buildings, such as these, can go as high as three stories.  In addition, the cost of building one of these bottle beauties is 1/4 that of a conventional house.

Although glass bottles have been used to construct small homes here in the U.S. since 1902, and houses utilizing empty vessels in construction date back to ancient Rome, Andreas Froese, a German environmentalist and inventor of ECOTEC, the art of PET bottle construction, has been the recent driving force behind plastic bottle projects around the world.  To read more about the possibilities of plastic bottle construction or to organize a project in your own country or town, visit eco-technologia.com.

Or, if you’d like to start small, you can use your discarded water and soda bottles as planters and transform a wall or a fence in your home into something both beautiful and beneficial:

I’m planning to decorate the fence around my patio with these, using drought tolerant plants and succulents.  Let me know if you do the same.

~~~~~~~~~

Make Soda Pop Chicken Wings for the next game and then transform the empty bottles into planters.

Soda Pop Chicken Wings
Be sure to use a premium brand of naturally-flavored orange soda with real sugar for this recipe.  Artificially sweetened soda or diet soda will not work.  You need the real sugar to create the proper caramelized wing sauce texture.

1 (12 oz) bottle of naturally-flavored orange soda
(made with cane sugar)
1/2 cup pineapple juice (unsweetened)
1/2 cup organic soy sauce
1/4 cup light brown organic brown sugar, packed
2 cloves of fresh garlic, minced
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
1/4 cup hot sauce, such as sriracha
3 lbs chicken wings, drumettes or drumsticks1/4 cup salted butter

Rinse chicken wings and pat dry.

In a large bowl, combine soda, pineapple juice, soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic, ginger and hot sauce.  Stir until sugar is dissolved.  Reserve 1/2 of the marinade and set aside.

Toss wings in bowl with remaining half of marinade and stir to coat well.  Cover and marinate in fridge for 2 to 4 hours.

To cook:
Pull chicken wings from marinade.  Discard used marinade.

In a large, heavy frying pan, over medium-high heat, melt butter.  Brown chicken wings on all sides.  Add 1/3 of the reserved marinade to the pan.  Reduce heat, cover and simmer until done (about 25 minutes), turning and basting every 10 minutes.  Add more of the reserved marinade, as needed, to baste and moisten the pan.

Keep warm in a low oven.

Serves 4 to 6

Posted in Uncategorized |