Eco Bricks

Trash is a problem all over the world, but when we first moved to Guatemala we were really struck by the amount of trash everywhere. That is when we learned about Eco bricks. Eco bricks are made from plastic drink bottles stuffed with trash. Since we rarely buy a drink in a plastic bottle, we started looking for bottles on the ground while we were walking back and forth to town. Then we started stuffing bottles.

We stuff all trash that is not compostable or recyclable. If you use a stick to push the trash down in the bottle, we found that we could fit a whole cereal bag full of trash in one bottle. We’ve found that wide mouth bottles are easier to stuff and pick up those up preferentially. Since we compost even our toilet paper, recycle everything recyclable, and stuff bottles, we only have a small cereal bag size of trash every 2-3 months!

The Eco bricks are then used in place of cement blocks or other building materials to build things. A

frame of wood is made and chicken wire attached to both sides. The stuffed bottles are then slipped between the chicken wire. They can be used with the bottles showing to make things like garbage cans that don’t need to be sealed or they can be covered by cement for a home. Recently a school in a town nearby was collecting them to make a playground and a local school garden project took some to make some benches in the garden.