Building Houses from Plastic, This Champion of Underprivileged
|
|
“The women of Paraguay are my biggest source of inspiration” said Elsa Zalvidar, an innovative social activist from the poverty-stricken countryside of Paraguay, a land locked country in the heart of South America.
Elsa Zalvidar.—KT Photoby S. NairElsa’s brainchild of using Loofah- a
cucumber like vegetable that is dried to yield a scratchy sponge for
use as abrasive skin scrubber- with other vegetable matter like husks
from corn and caranday palm trees, along with recycled plastic, to form
strong, lightweight panels which can be used to construct furniture and
houses.
Elsa’s simple and innovative idea caught the attention of the panel of
Rolex Awards for Enterprise making her one of the five laureates for
the year 2008.
“I have been working for and with the needy women of Paraguay since
1992 with an Non profitable organization. 30 percent of the women
sustain the family and most of them start working at a very young age”
said Elsa.
It is this plight of the women of Paraguay that enthused Elsa to team
up with Pedro Pardos, an industrial engineer, to search for new ways to
use recycled plastic and vegetable material to construct inexpensive
panels for wall and roofing for building houses. She realised that if
the first step to improvising the lives of the poor was increasing
their income, secondly was to help them find decent housing , which
would dramatically raise their living standards.
After continuous efforts the panels were made by combining a melting
unit, mixer, extruder and cutting unit, the machine can produce- a
half metre wide panel of 120 metres long. Depending on the exact mix of
plastics and fibres, as well as the thickness of the panel, the
composite can have varying amounts of flexibility, weight and
insulating qualities, making it adaptable for varied construction needs.
With about 30,000 families in Paraguay not having adequate housing
facilities the creation of the panels for housing came as a blessing to
the poorer houses of Paraguay.
Elsa said, “This project has many different kinds of impact on the
environment. Most significantly, we’ll recycle the mountain of garbage
generated by plastics. And because we’re using fibres that are
completely renewable, we create jobs and stop using timber for
construction. These panels can be made in a matter of days and the
houses can be set up quickly and easily.”
With two prototype houses have already mean made and the process will
go faster once she receives the prize money of 100,000 dollars from the
Rolex Enterprise Award.
Source: Khaleejtimes
|
