My Ecobricking experience

Hey guys! This post is not very much related to art but it is about something that both bothers me and has a solution. Plastic waste. We now live on Bali and there is so much plastic around… In our neighbourhood locals do not collect plastic garbage for recycling. Instead they burn it right in front of their houses.

When we moved to the trippy house we live in now I was trying to hire a company that recycles plastic to come to our place but they said it was too far a I should have convinced at least 20 householders to sign up for the recycling program. Well, it did not work out.

Shortly after that I’ve stumbled upon the concept of Ecobricks. You simply take an empty plastic bottle and stuff it with plastic waste. Sometimes you need to cut the objects to smaller pieces so they fit well inside.

I’ve even met Russell Maier – the inventor of Ecobricks here on Bali and he has presented me a perfect bamboo stick for easier ecobricking :) He has also inspected a sample ecobrick I’ve made and gave me some advice on how to improve it.

The hardest part for me is time that it takes to make one Ecobrick – usually about an hour. That’s why plastic waste is piling up in our kitchen. Luckily we don’t buy to much processed and packaged food :) Below is an example of one of my Ecobricks. I know it is not perfect but I believe it is better to have it this way instead of burning the trash in the garden.

I really doubt I ever gonna build something with Ecobricks ’cause you need thousands of them to make a house or anything else big enough to fit a person. That’s why I think I will donate ’em to one of the schools where Russell held his workshops.

I hope this info was useful to you and you can adopt it in your daily life. Check out Ecobricks.org for more information!