Your Lovely Itty-Bitty-Plastic-Waste Jail

I threw nothing away for seven years by making eco barrels

Lucinda Munro Cook
The Environment

--

An eco barrel reading ‘No such place as away’
All photos by author. This Eco Barrel contains six months of my clean and dry domestic plastic waste

Eco bricks and barrels are a practical, easy way to help save the Earth, and all who sail on Her

It’s better not to buy plastic in the first place, but who can avoid plastic ties, caps and packaging these days?

You probably just throw that stuff ‘away’, but there’s no such place as “away” on our beautiful and beleaguered planet.

Perhaps you lovingly wash and throw hard plastic items in the recycle bin, but in Europe and elsewhere, it’s a big and scandalous lie that our domestic plastic waste is recycled. Most of it was sent to China and burned until China said ‘No more!’ Now it gets dumped in poorer countries of the world, or sits in tankers that are refused a port.

Take heart, for you can now afford to know that it’s a lie: none of your plastic waste needs to end up in the oceans, landfill, or the air.

An eco brick is a capped plastic bottle or container stuffed with your plastic waste to a set density. In Indonesia and all around the world, eco-minded people are making fabulous houses, boats, and furniture from eco bricks.

--

--