Next month, they’ll also build 20 more houses in Cartagena – a port city on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. So far, Conceptos Plásticos have built a temporary shelter for 42 families displaced by violence, three smaller permanent shelters (each one measuring 1,100 square meters), and eight houses.
Until then, it offers residents a durable shelter that, thanks to its construction and materials, is fireproof and earthquake-resistant, and requires minimal maintenance. And yes, the plastic mix will eventually biodegrade, but not for more than 500 years. Like LEGO blocks, these interlocking structures don’t need adhesive to be strong and sturdy, which makes them a good option for mobile shelters. The cost is considerably lower than traditional systems used in rural areas too – their standard house mentioned above can be built for $5,200. Oscar’s plastic homes can be assembled remarkably quickly – a 40 m 2 house divided into two bedrooms, a bathroom, living room, dining room and kitchen, and can be built by four people in just five days.
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Importantly, the company also trains communities in how to build these structures, giving them ownership over their homes and providing skills they can take elsewhere. The materials are thoroughly cleaned, before being ground into a rough power, mixed, melted and extruded into a range of shapes – mostly beams, blocks and pillars – which lock together to form buildings. Well, firstly they work closely with those who will benefit from the housing – visiting schools and community groups to encourage them to collect various waste plastics and old tires. Plastic trash could offer a sustainable construction material for the houses of the future (Image. Neither of these is the sole concern of one country though as Oscar told me himself, “Plastic is a problem everywhere, and people will always need a roof over their head.” So how do they turn a waste product into a construction material? And a report launched at the World Economic Forum in January said that around 309 million tons of plastic was manufactured in 2014. A recent report from TECHO showed that a staggering 80% of Latin America's population now live in cities. To be honest, it’s tough to say which could have the most serious implications for the environment. The company aims to tackle two problems: one, the growing mountain of plastic in landfills and two, booming populations in cities across Latin America. Once they were joined by Fernando Llanos (and later, Jesus Mendez) Conceptos Plásticos was born, and they’ve gone from strength to strength since. Oscar and his colleagues Henry Cañon and Isabel Cristina started out with an aim of reducing the environmental impact of plastic by reusing it in construction. His company, Conceptos Plásticos transforms plastic and rubber waste into a construction material, and uses it to build houses for those who need it, across Colombia. But that’s all beginning to change, thanks to the work of architect Oscar Mendez. In Bogota, 700 tons of plastic is discarded daily, with only 100 tons of that recycled.
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