First Time in Indonesia: Plastic Bottle Walls, Anyone?

The Majlis Dhikr of the Happy Heart Foundation (Yayasan Majelis Dzikir Hati Senang) in Indonesia, intends to build its first zawiyah (center) from recycled plastic bottles in Parung-just south of Jakarta, the nation’s capital.

In a country where time and energy are often more available commodities than cash, The Happy Heart Foundation, administered by Shaikh Husain ash-Shadhili ad-Darqawi, hopes that the introduction of this labor-intensive construction-method in Indonesia will open the door to helping the many poor and disadvantaged build sustainable homes out of waste materials like it already has in many countries, including: Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Honduras, Mexico, the United States, Taiwan, Nigeria and the Philippines.

These unique structures not only help to clean up the trash but also offer other benefits:

• bio-climatic (hot outside=cool inside and vice versa)
• earthquake resistant
• reduce CO2 emissions by not using bricks which release large amounts of CO2 into the air when baked
• reuse plastic bottles which often end up in landfills for centuries

At this time, it appears that this will be the first building project to use plastic bottle walls  in the Indonesian archipelago, although building with bottles is more and more being recognized as an eco-smart way of building homes at a fraction of the cost of traditional housing, across the globe.

If you know of any other architecture in Indonesia using recycled bottles, please let us know.