Eco-Brick Project

Sheppie High has been a WESSA Eco-School for a number of years and we have now obtained our international flag. As a participant in the Water Explorers movement, the Eco-Club is launching a campaign to reduce the amount of garbage that ends up in our oceans from landfills. The campaign will have three components: The first is eco bricks. Each brick is made up of a two litre plastic bottle filled with non-bio-degradable material and then compacted. Secondly, staff and learners are urged to stop using plastic drinking straws, and lastly, a company in Durban is producing nesting boxes for owls from recycled plastic, and we would like to contribute to this project.

What is an EcoBrick?

An EcoBrick is a plastic bottle packed tightly with non-biodegradable waste. These bottles are then used as building materials to create sustainable homes, schools and furniture.

Making an EcoBrick is easy:

1. Collect your clean and dry household waste. We recommend only waste that you cannot recycle (like dog food bags), but you can EcoBrick anything non-biodegradable and dry.
2. Twist your waste and insert it into a 2L bottle. Compress it as tightly as you can with a stick.
3. Keep doing this - make sure your bottle is unsquishable.
4. Think your EcoBrick is done? If you can squeeze it by more than 10% with one hand you should add more waste.
5. No longer squishable? It's done! Celebrate and contribute your EcoBrick to a project.

Making EcoBricks is not about encouraging the production of plastic, but rather a temporary means of protecting the environment while us humans figure out a way to cut plastic out of our lives altogether.