The recycled "Bridge of Sighs" over a pond of treated water. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet

Accents
Five-Star Garbage
By Fabiana Frayssinet

Decades ago, a Brazilian biologist couple put into practice the principle of using for their own construction materials what others throw away.

BARRA MANSA, Brazil, Oct 26 (Tierramérica).- For the past 43 years, biologists Edna and Luiz Toledo have not dealt with a garbage truck to collect their trash. Their three-story house is made out of "garbage", from the floor to the roof. What others would see as worthless is for them honorable raw material.

Edna welcomes us into her "Recycled House" in the town of Barra Mansa, some 150 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro, with a breakfast that includes jam made from banana skins, another from pumpkin pulp, and a pie made from cabbage stems.

The remnants of the breakfast go into a ceramic container, a "decomposer", made by Luiz, in which organic waste breaks down until it becomes a natural fertilizer for their organic garden.

A bird with brilliant black and white feathers pecks at the worms in the fertilizer to feed her chicks.

Which parts of the house are not garbage? Tierramérica asks. "Garbage?" exclaims a surprised and somewhat offended Edna. "Here nothing is garbage. Everything is put to use."

It was Luiz who, worried about the things that went to waste in normal households and the country's enormous housing deficit, had the idea of building cheaply by using recyclable leftovers.

The couple began to collect rubble from demolition sites, bottles, broken glass, plastic containers, boxes, bottle caps and cans.

What looked like a "madman's" utopia - at a time when nobody yet spoke of global warming or greenhouse gas emissions from garbage dumps - became a reality. A three-story reality, a home to live in.

At first, one has the impression of being in the candy house of the Hansel and Gretel fairytale. But here are bricks are plastic bottles that once held refreshing beverages, and the curtains to ward off insects are made from braided candy wrappers.

In the garden is the "bridge of sighs", made from rubble and columns of glass bottles that reflect the morning sun as it crosses the bucolic pond of crystalline water. One would never guess that the pond is filled with treated water from the sewer system.

The floor of the garage is covered with pieces of used tires to hold the soil in place when it rains.

The only things the couple built with commercial construction materials are the beams and columns that make up the house's basic structure. It was a matter of safety. But don't be surprised if Luiz, the prolific inventor, discovers a way to replace the reinforced concrete.

The rest - 90 percent of the house - is made from recycled materials. The walls are a mix of rubble, sand and a little cement, all of which are a substitute for bricks.

Luiz experimented with several techniques and materials to avoid using plaster on the walls. Some walls have a mixture of lamb manure (the lamb fed only milk, states a sign), others with recycled cardboard or polystyrene.

The tiling is made from colorful bottles. There are beautiful mosaics in the forms of animals, made from pieces of broken glass, including a multicolor pheasant.

The biologist also researched different types of roofing: some made from a mixture of water, dry leaves and shreds of carbon paper, some with tiles made from a paste of milk cartons.

Some of the house's floors are marble, discarded by construction sites, and others are made out of plastic bottle caps and the bottles themselves.

These unconventional building materials have an advantage of additional comfort. In this warm climate, they are good insulation, keeping the Toledos' home cooler than others.

Inexpensive, esthetically pleasing, practical as well as self-sustainable, the cost was 70 percent less than a house built with the usual construction materials in Brazil.

Architect William Monachesi, on a visit to the Recycled House, calls it "spontaneous architecture," a global trend in which "people with specific housing needs take the initiative to build their own homes, mostly with recycled material."

Nearly every day, the house receives visits from people interested in learning about the Toledos' unusual techniques.

The couple organized a cooperative of garbage collectors in the Volta Redonda zone, also located in Rio de Janeiro state, and they buy everything that their neighbors throw out. "We sell it on the market. The system is self-sustainable," stresses Edna.

A low-income neighbor, also a widow, has used her "garbage" income from the Toledos to buy a refrigerator and television set, in addition to better sustaining her children, says Luiz.

When Edna and Luiz moved to this neighborhood, there were 12 cases of dengue fever per year. No more, says Edna. By purchasing their cans, plastic containers and tires, the neighbors have "cleared out their patios" so there are no longer any breeding sites - no standing water - for the mosquitoes that transmit the disease.

The Recycled House's decorations also come from the trash: broken fans and coffee makers are transformed into lamps, and pieces of mirror, ceramics and statues in this house look as if they should be in a home decorating magazine.

Luiz takes us to see his latest project, on the adjacent land situated at the top of the hill where they live. To reach the top, one walks up a sort of ramp built from remnants of wood and iron.

It is the Self-Sustainable Integrated Rural Eco-Condominiums, a grouping of 20 houses, with shared spaces, kitchen and laundry. All built from what others consider trash.

A children's park is already built, including a mosaic-tiled pool, with sea-themed pictures made from small pieces of bottle glass. The pool is fed by a natural spring.

The homes will also have a water treatment system. The solid waste will be transformed into fertilizer and the liquid waste will be recovered to run the toilets.

The aim is to live according to his "eco-solidarity" philosophy, says Luiz. For that reason, the condominiums will only accept those who follow those ideas and understand that here the only thing disposable is the garbage can itself.

* IPS correspondent.