By Carolina Lukac | Workshop and Outreach Coordinator
We recently hosted a workshop at our training center in Oaxaca on "upcycling" to provide examples of how plastic PET bottles can be re-used in environmentally friendly building projects. Mexico is the second highest producer of PET bottles that end up in landfills for hundreds of years. Turning the bottles into alternative building materials is a practical, low cost, and simple technology.
Our most recent project activities deal with alternative building techniques for constructing water-saving composting toilets and rainwater harvesting water cisterns.
The first project was the construction of a composting toilet module, using PET bottles to build up the walls. Volunteers, staff members, and local community members participated in the building project.
We are currently planning our second plastic bottle construction on site. We will be building a 5,000 liter rainwater storage cistern, by using PET bottles as "bricks". We have built 2 similar cisterns in rural Mayan communities in Yucatán and now we are looking forward to having a living example of one at our training center.
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