Here’s the article I wrote for our volunteer newspaper The Van Am about the bottle brick project I’ve been working on at site. I learned about eco-bricks when I lived at PLACE, a cooperative in Oakland, before my service. Bottle bricking is a practice I’ll carry back home with me to the states and I encourage everyone to give it a try!
Oh! And “sak” means throw, “ples blo doti” means trash area, and all the other Bislama is just toktok nomo.
Wan Doti Gel
Let’s talk trash. Not the usual village gossip – “Yu bin luk karen blo Hendrixon? Hemi busi we.” or “Man. Sundei lo jej Jenista hemi bin spaeglas witim niufala fren blem.” or “Hemi go wea? Mi tink se hemi go lo Santo. Truia hemi stap ran albaot no lukaotem gud famli blo hem.” Or the many soap opera-esque stories I create in my head to entertain myself while I’m silently sitting in a bubble of language chatter. You get it. Not that kinda trash, the authentic stuff. The twisty bags, the breakfast cracker containers, the noodles wrappers. The stuff people sak out the truck window and use as fire starter. This is what I’ve been pretty fixated on lately. Things have gotten pretty dirty over here! There are few places more humbling than knee deep in someone else’s trash. Which is where I keep finding myself, getting excited (more than I’ll admit) about finding plastic. Sometimes I’ll get lucky and the plastic will be clean-ish and dry and that, of course, is cause for even more excitement! Bring out the trashy dancing! I do a little jig, stick it in my bag, and keep digging.
For the last few months or so I’ve been collecting non-biodegradable trash such as plastic, batteries, and Styrofoam and building eco-bricks with the students at my school. If you haven’t heard my rant before, eco-bricks are plastic bottles stuffed with trash and used to build anything you want. They are great because they are free, clean up the mess, and anyone can make them – even kindys with a little help.
You fill the bottle with plastic and pack it in with a stick until there is way more trash stuffed in there then you thought possible. I mean, really, these things are like Mary Poppin’s handbag. Fill in the gaps with softer plastic. If you’ve got batteries or hard plastic, you can cut out a door near the mouth of the bottle and seal it back up when you’re done feeding it. And make sure you choose some colorful trash for the very bottom, it’ll be peeking out of your creation!
Once you’ve made a bunch of these, you can start building. There are great references out there explaining bottle bricks and how to construct with them. Specifically, ecobricks.org was super helpful and easy to follow. Our school decided to start with a little bench. There are not many plastic bottles on Ambae that aren’t being used as kava transporters, so we were a bit limited. Thanks to Seli and the staff, I had a few bags full of empties from Vila that they sent over, too! Another weird thing to be delighted about, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t. Everyone in Lolowai harbor was confused and amused when I opened my freshly-delivered cargo full of… trash, and was genuinely thrilled about it.
My friend Samantha visited and I figured that this would be an easy breezy project for us to tackle. Like almost every project I find myself tangled up in, I underestimated the work that would go into it. Sometimes I just picture things completing themselves. Mix the cement, pour it into the hole, sprinkle fairy dust, and poof! A market house! This, I have found out the slow and unfortunate way, is not so. And in the case of the bottle brick bench, the same goes. It was hard, but it was fun. One of my favorite memories of construction day was Sam singing “Vacation, all I ever wanted” and us almost peeing our pants at the truth in that. But at the end of the day we got to sit on the finished product and feel good. What didn’t feel good, however, were our fingers for the next few days. Take note: cement kakaes your skin and makes your hands covered in holes, burning, and very useless. But you just built something, so it’s time to relax anyway!
It’s a simple little bench tucked away underneath a mandarin tree by the road. It serves its purpose as supporter of resting asses and subject of “look what the tuturani built” conversations. If results were measured by tangibility, it wouldn’t do much justice. The best things that have come out of the bottle brick project have little to do with the bench.
One noticeable change I’ve seen is how much less trash there is surrounding the school grounds. The kids picked ol ples blo doti clean! This visual difference is something – the place no longer looks like a scattered dump and the teachers and students are more conscious of what they’re saking. And I am, too. Until I scattered my own collected trash out on the classroom floor for us to pack into empties, I hadn’t realized how much waste I create and throw away. This project forced me to ask myself, “Where is away?” And I’m happier knowing that this waste has found a new home – cradle to cradle – instead of just being thrown out back or burned at the stake – cradle to grave. And to top it all off (ha!) I’ve really loved the impromptu trash talks people ask me to give. What to burn, what not to burn, what to do with batteries. My favorites are the nakamal speeches on BPA requested by this apu or that uncle whenever I show up at a kava bar with my papa. If these instances spark interest in anyone, even if it’s just a kava drunk thought trail, than that’s fantastic. That’s what it’s all about. Making us more mindful about our everyday practices and the impact of our actions. Hemia nao!
Furthermore, bottle bricking is wonderful if classroom teaching isn’t your favorite thing. I’ve gotten to talk about cleaning up the environment, actually clean up the environment, and organize trash dances, all outside of the confines of the classroom. You can get creative and throw in plenty of English literacy if that interests you, too. Use the bottles as paper and have spelling tests on them. Discuss with the older students our roles as protectors of the land and have them write a paragraph or essay about it. Write vocabulary words on the bottles and hide them like easter eggs, whoever finds and defines the most wins. Set the bottles up as pins and go bowling! If you knock down 5, you have to come up with a 5-letter word about whatever this week’s theme is. Or make a sentence with five words. Or pretend you’re a puskat for 5 meows. Whatever works!
In fact, my favorite teaching days are what I call “free for all” when the class goes outside and collects trash. You’ll be amazed to see how exhilarating this is for the students. They all do the quiet “yes yesss” hissing and run out the door like I’ve told them they get to do probably anything other than pick up trash. I’ve even found a few gems while on these outings – a sturdy bowl that just needed a dent popped out of it and a couple of knives that could use a good sharpening. As they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure! And speaking of that, this project inspired some more trash to treasure projects as well. Like transforming beer bottles into hanging vases and recycling tin cans into funky wind chimes. We painted the oldfala water tank at my school and now look at an underwater mural instead of a grey cement cylinder. The students in the Niko Si aka Yu Yes aka good behavior club got to paint their sea creatures at the end of the school year, which made them super cool for being good kids. It was so fun watching their creativity flow on this huge canvas. The beautiful tank art is a reminder of the power of positive reinforcement and the joys that come with collective arts and crafts!
So, where to start? Visit ecobricks.org and download their vision and construction PDF guides. Make a model bottle brick. Or 8. Present the idea at a staff meeting and teach them how to build them first. When I introduced it to the classes, I had a whole spiel I went through. On the board we listed out aelan kakae. I would use corn as the example and talked about the husk and how it protects the food inside. I asked the students what you do with the covering once you’re ready to eat the corn – sak it. Ok, afta? The husk rots and returns to the earth (learning the local word for ground or land helped me with this). Next we listed out kakae blong stoa. I asked what you do with the noodles wrapper once you’re ready to eat the noodles – sak it. Ok, afta? Stumped! Because, as we know, the plastic doesn’t rot and return to the earth, but I think that can be hard to conceptualize when littering is accepted and normal here. So we’d talk this out and discuss why it’s bad. And also why burning plastic is bad (get into whatever science they’re itching for!) and if burning and saking are out of the question, what do we do? We bottle brick!
Explain the steps, the rules, the purpose, etc. and there you go. Shoot any questions you have my way and once I’m gone in March, take advantage of Caroline and Cole’s toolbox. Their bottle brick project is a huge success and I know they’ve come up with some creative elements that work for their community.
And from one dirty girl to another, happy bricking!
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