Expandable and Ecological Homes built of Plastic Bottles (I)

In the little town of Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia, empty plastic bottles lying as waste on the streets are being collected and used as house bricks. Ingrid Vaca Diez is an innovative Bolivian woman who reuses plastic and glass bottles to build expandable and ecological homes. Her enthusiasm and creative thinking already changed the reality of life of many families.

How could she, a lawyer, come up with such a brilliant architecture idea? With a variety of ‘sticking’ material such as cement, mud, animal feces and sugar mixed with straw she was able to use plastic and glass bottles filled with sand as ‘bricks’. This material mix represents the largest part of these modular houses.Once she knew her project's feasibility was high, Ingrid Diez decided to target this housing alternative to large families living in extreme poverty. The very first house became reality in 2007 and it's a 120m² building made of approximately:

• 10,000 plastic bottles of 2 liters
• 3,000 plastic bottles of 600 ml
• 3,000 glass bottles

Ingrid is now almost done with the third house and, of course, many more will soon start the process of becoming homes.

In short, Ingrid's housing method builds homes to those in true need, while turning an often generated human waste into a resource. A parallel benefit created during this housing process is the use of locally-found house elements—such as doors, windows, floors and tiles—which help decrease the overall transportation needs to finally reduce the price of the house. Certainly, we can all agree on the ever-growing importance of building affordable houses while creating less pollution, but we also need a straightforward mentality like Ingrid's to make all our ideas/projects on sustainable housing possible.