Ending 2018 with an eco-brick: My experience and lessons learned

There’s so much plastic being thrown away these days and I felt so guilty for being part of the problem, being one of those people who just mindlessly threw away plastic rather than reducing or recycling it. I knew I had to change my ways because I cared about my environment and the threat that pollution was doing to it. Recently, alarming reports have been showing up on my newsfeed. About the poor animals that are affected by consuming plastic items, the microplastics that can potentially harm us.

Plastic pollution is a loud bell ringing, and we must not ignore it.

So, I started my plan to make an eco-brick last November 20. I read up about eco-bricking online (and even wrote about it) and seeing the potential applications, it inspired me to collect plastic, clean them up and cut them into small pieces to then be pounded into the eco-brick that you’ll see below. It started off with me eating some hamburgers with my boyfriend and his cousins, that I decided I must to be mindful of what I throw away, and it started from there. Luckily, I was able to convince my boyfriend to join in too, and so we both were able to quester 0.4kg at the end of December 23.

I was definitely surprised by the sheer number of plastic items that went into making this ecobrick, and I am glad that instead of those individual pieces of plastic being dumped into the ocean, it’s safely tucked into this bottle where it can be used over and over as many different things. They can be made into furniture, a wall, divider. I have yet to actually make something out of a bunch of eco-bricks, but making one sure is a fun way to spend your time while saving the earth.

You can’t just stuff plastic into the bottle and call it an eco-brick though, there are certain conditions that make your eco-brick good for use.

Here’s what I learned while making them:

Feel free to share this infographic to anyone who needs some help with making ecobricks! If you’re just starting out like I was, these tips will help a great deal, and avoid those messy mistakes. If anyone is interested, we have a community on gobrik.com called “Justly Eco”. You can come and join us to help collect ecobricks that we can donate to a community project in the Philippines!

In the meantime, we’ll continue making ecobricks and quester a lot of plastic, keeping it away from polluting the biosphere. In the future, we may also accept eco-brick donations in exchange for discounts for our shampoo bars! Watch out for my next blog post about other ways we can repurpose plastic and earn from it, a community project called Precious Plastic!