Facing the sea on a paradise island, it is a small cubic house… (almost) entirely built with the plastic bags that pollute Bali’s rivers. A French siblings who grew up here made it their mission to clean up the waterways and beaches, and developed a process to recycle some of the waste.
Bali… a name that makes you dream, synonymous with a paradise island and thousand-year-old temples. But the other side of the story is that the “island of the gods” is drowning in plastic: it produces 300,000 tonnes of waste per year, which accumulates in the mangroves or on the beaches. Here, there is no trash collection, so residents often throw them directly into the river…
Preventing this garbage from reaching the ocean, cleaning the beaches… it’s a titanic task that three brothers and sisters who grew up in Bali have given themselves as a mission. With their association Sungai Watch (link in English), Gary, Kelly and Sam Bencheghib have installed a network of barriers on rivers to filter waste, as well as centers to sort all the trash they collect. A warehouse, which “Envoyé Spécial” journalists were able to visit, is reserved for plastic bags. Here, they are treated to be recycled… in the form of furniture.
How plastic bags are transformed into furniture…
There is the red bin, the blue bin, the green bin, all filled with plastic shavings: sorted by color, the bags are shredded into fragments to be more easily cleaned by machines. With zebra bags with black and white stripes, very common in Balinese markets and bazaars, things are more complicated. The siblings have, however, managed, thanks to a process of which they keep a secret, to obtain an astonishing result: they are recycled into plates of material which leave the zebra stripes and even the outline of the bag visible. Cut, they can be used to make storage furniture, tables and chairs, because they can be worked exactly like wooden boards.
…or even at home
From there to making it a house… that’s what Gary has just achieved. This cube of a dozen square meters with a view of the sea took him three months to build. A small “house made of 35,000 white plastic bags”. With the exception of the interior walls and the insulation, for which cardboard, aluminum and bamboo were used, everything is made of recycled plastic boards: the furniture, the shower, and the kitchen furniture. It is lined with a kind of plywood made from plastic cups, which produces the effect of tiles. Cost of this accommodation powered by solar energy: 15,000 euros.
Excerpt from “Under the plastic, the beach”, a report to be seen in “Envoyéspecial” on October 5, 2023.
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