AmenZen's Journey from Trash to Portable Landfill Device to BottleBricks (ecoladrillo)
In my quest for alternatives that would allow me to recycle all trash and feel good about it, since 2003, I encountered the Portable Landfill Device - Bottle Brick idea and mentioned it on my website and business www.ereciclaje.com
My friend Pato told me about bottlebricks stuffed with plastic that he saw in his trip to the call of the condor in Perú by 2005 when we lived in Gratamira Ecovillage in Medellín, Colombia.
Then I saw the work of the Colombian Parmaculturist Daniel Jaramillo and Sara in their project Colombia Sostenible building a composting toilet unit with bottlebrick walls in an island in the Colombian Caribbean. I also tested the idea when I went Santa Cruz del Islote, a very small, very populated island in the caribbean, to help in a Health Brigade and do a shore, underwater and town cleanup. I faced the fact that there was no garbage truck that came to pick it up different than the ocean, and also I didn´t have any trash bags. Bottles were easy to spot and trash was everywhere, so with the help of the children and later meetings with the elder the idea seemed to be worth trying.
A few years back I had seen the work of Andreas Froesse building incredible structures in a park with bottle bricks filled with sand or urbanite in Honduras. I lost track of him until he came to Colombia to teach and build a bathing pool for a hotel with sand filled bottlebricks in 2005. I asked him if he would consider building with the bottlebricks filled with trash, and from them on we have been experimenting with the technique of reducing landfill waste and using it for building.
By early 2011 I travelled to Bogotá to participate in a course with Javeriana University´s faculty of architecture and with Andreas Froesse
to run tests on the building technique called ECOTEC with the bottles full of sand. After my company organized a course in Medellín to build the first
three water tanks out of Portable Landfill Devices or Bottlebricks.
The idea has gone widespread through main media in TV shows in Colombia, and through the internet there are bottlebrick projects popping around the world. Mainly that I know of in Latin America. The work of Andreas Froesse is being spread now of in India and Afrika where major buildings and water tanks are being tested. Now the German government also helped to do some tests on the technique which you can further investigate in www.eco-tecnologia.com
My latest activities include:
Please visit www.ereciclaje.com and look for the Link ECOLADRILLO (bottlebrick in spanish) to see a collection of slideshows and videos of our
constructions and Ecotec’s constructions.
Yours truly
AmenZen Rrague
Creator @ereciclaje
www.ereciclaje.com ereciclaje@ereciclaje.com
Calle 18 No # 91- 165 Tel - Cel: 3122025065
Medellín - Colombia S.A..
My friend Pato told me about bottlebricks stuffed with plastic that he saw in his trip to the call of the condor in Perú by 2005 when we lived in Gratamira Ecovillage in Medellín, Colombia.
Then I saw the work of the Colombian Parmaculturist Daniel Jaramillo and Sara in their project Colombia Sostenible building a composting toilet unit with bottlebrick walls in an island in the Colombian Caribbean. I also tested the idea when I went Santa Cruz del Islote, a very small, very populated island in the caribbean, to help in a Health Brigade and do a shore, underwater and town cleanup. I faced the fact that there was no garbage truck that came to pick it up different than the ocean, and also I didn´t have any trash bags. Bottles were easy to spot and trash was everywhere, so with the help of the children and later meetings with the elder the idea seemed to be worth trying.
A few years back I had seen the work of Andreas Froesse building incredible structures in a park with bottle bricks filled with sand or urbanite in Honduras. I lost track of him until he came to Colombia to teach and build a bathing pool for a hotel with sand filled bottlebricks in 2005. I asked him if he would consider building with the bottlebricks filled with trash, and from them on we have been experimenting with the technique of reducing landfill waste and using it for building.
By early 2011 I travelled to Bogotá to participate in a course with Javeriana University´s faculty of architecture and with Andreas Froesse
to run tests on the building technique called ECOTEC with the bottles full of sand. After my company organized a course in Medellín to build the first
three water tanks out of Portable Landfill Devices or Bottlebricks.
The idea has gone widespread through main media in TV shows in Colombia, and through the internet there are bottlebrick projects popping around the world. Mainly that I know of in Latin America. The work of Andreas Froesse is being spread now of in India and Afrika where major buildings and water tanks are being tested. Now the German government also helped to do some tests on the technique which you can further investigate in www.eco-tecnologia.com
My latest activities include:
- Negotiating with pepsi of Ecuador to build a farm,
- Negotiating with Cemex in Colombia to sponsor schools and do community focused green buildings
- collecting the bottles in an oil camp of 10,000 people in the Colombian wilderness and have plans to build a kiosk next month
- environmental classroom with rain water storage tanks made of bottlebricks, ecobathrooms and a permaculture food forest garden.
Please visit www.ereciclaje.com and look for the Link ECOLADRILLO (bottlebrick in spanish) to see a collection of slideshows and videos of our
constructions and Ecotec’s constructions.
Yours truly
AmenZen Rrague
Creator @ereciclaje
www.ereciclaje.com ereciclaje@ereciclaje.com
Calle 18 No # 91- 165 Tel - Cel: 3122025065
Medellín - Colombia S.A..
