Ecobricks

Seminarians using ecobricks to build a garden fence

At the seminary for the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in Manila, Philippines, thousands of plastic bottles can be found everywhere. They're beneath trees, around gardens. They're in the church, and in some cases, they're even inside the walls. Just where the seminarians placed them. Rather than littering the campus, the bottles and other plastics have been repurposed into "ecobricks" that serve as building materials for projects around the grounds. Each brick starts with an empty 1.5-liter plastic bottle, then other plastics are cut into smaller pieces and pressed into the bottle with a bamboo stick. All plastics are cleaned first and sometimes painted for a more artistic look. The process can be time-consuming, with a single brick sometimes taking as long as one day to make. The Missionaries often use finished ecobricks and cement to build planter boxes around trees, barrier fences for gardens, and the bases of outdoor concrete tables and chairs. They even built a chapel with ecobricks used for walls, as you can see in the photo below. Inside their church, they have formed stands for flowers in front of the altar as well as a manger for a nativity scene. Being responsible for the use of the plastic could be a good way to save our environment.

A chapel whose walls were built using ecobricks

The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart's ecobricks are one example of the ways people and communities across the world are attempting to grapple with the gargantuan problem that plastic waste and plastic pollution poses to the planet and the health of humans, species and ecosystems. The world produces 430 million metric tons of plastics every year, with two-thirds discarded shortly after use. About 11million metric tons of plastics enter the oceans each year, or the equivalent of a garbage truck a minute. In addition to polluting lands and waters, plastics pose serious health threats to humans and other species. More than 13,000 chemicals have been identified in plastic production, with at least 2,300 labeled "chemicals of concern," including carcinogens and endocrine disruptors. Plastics don't biodegrade, and instead break into smaller and smaller "microplastics" that have been found in the stomachs of birds, fish, other marine species, livestock and more, as well as humans, including inside foetuses and babies. Some chemicals used in plastic production have been linked to cancer, heart disease, infertility, and can disrupt brain development, especially in children and infants.