SearchThis sounds like an awesome idea. A company formed in 2013 in Puebla, Mexico, called Eco Domum, is using discarded plastic trash to form panels to build houses.
It is the brainchild of Carlos Daniel Gonzalez who identified the need for low cost housing in the area and came up with this solution. He partnered with local trash collectors to take their discarded plastic—a process that keeps the plastic out of landfills as well as paying higher wages to the local trash collectors. Molten liquid plastic is baked and then molded and then sent through a hydraulic press where it is crystallized and compressed into panels.
One small house requires around 80 panels which amounts to approximately two tons of plastic. Each panel is 8’ by 4’ by I inch. It takes about a week to construct a house (walls and a roof) and the cost is around $300. (Habitat for Humanity takes about 8 months to build a house.) This is, of course, the basic structure and everything else must then be added. And it’s very small ranging from 430 to 460 square feet.
Only time will tell if this will be a lasting solution to a worldwide need for cheap housing.
