Pet bottles become building blocks of green house

Chennai: With the price of construction materials sky-rocketing, a green organisation in the city has come up with an innovative concept of constructing houses using pet bottles. The innovators said it is possible to construct environment-friendly, sustainable hom­es without bricks and iron.

The concept involves plastic bottles tightly packed with sand, which forms the basic unit, replacing bricks. “A prototype home was constructed on 240 sq feet, using 10,000 pet bottles and 25 bags of cement at an approximate cost of Rs 35,000 and it was a success,” said Romaine San Francesco, projects coordinator, Sampran Foundation.

According to the innovator, the stuffed pet bottles will be tightly arranged forming a structure on which a concrete coating will be given to stabilise the block. “Substituting bricks with pet bottles brings down the cost of construction,” says Francesco.

“Later, the concrete blocks are tightly wound with nylon ropes made out of fishing nets. This would further increase the strength of the concrete structures,” added Francesco, project coordinator.

Francesco points out that the environment-friendly experiment was inspired by fisherfolk who use nylon nets for fishing. “When a trawlers’ fishing net can hold fish weighing tonnes, it can surely hold concrete together and this was the logic behind the idea.

The pet bottle homes are considerably cooler inside as the mud in the bottles insulates the homes from the heat outside,” said Patrick San Francesco, inn­ovator–fou­nder, Sampran Found­ation. The green innovation is awaiting inspection and endorsement by structural stability engineers of IIT-Madras.