Ecuador: Discarded Plastic Bottles being used for thatch roofing

takepart.com – David McNair / Five years ago, strategic management professor David Saiia traveled with his students from New York’s Ithaca College to Ecuador for a project creating sustainable livelihoods in conservation regions disrupted by logging and poaching. But the team noticed another problem that was all around them: plastic bottles.

“I would find them in the most remote places imaginable,” Saiia said. “I would be on the 2,000-year-old Yumbo Calunco trails and find plastic waste.”

According to Saiia, nearly 8 trillion plastic bottles are discarded around the world each year.

His students at the time challenged him: What could they build from all that plastic? Together, they came up with rudimentary drawings for a machine that could cut plastic bottles into strips to use as roof thatching in a rainforest region that sees precipitation nearly every day. Read Article