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EcoBrick
Guide
Mobilize the Energy and
Imagination of Students
to Clean & Green your
School & Community
EcoBricks.org
Plastics can be saved
into bottles that we can
use to make green spaces
that enrich our homes,
schools and community.
Why make EcoBricks?
When plastics are littered,
burned or dumped, they poison
our earth, air and water.
They don't biodegrade, they photodegrade. This means
that plastics left for years in fields or water will slowly
break into smaller and small pieces. Eventually these
pieces are so small that they are absorbed by the plants,
fishes and animals that we eat.
Plastics are made from petro-chemicals. These chemicals don’t fit back
into the ecologies around us. Scientific studies show that these chemicals
are toxic to animals and humans— we know this when we smell plastics
burning. Over time, when these chemicals leach into the land, water and
air, they cause birth defects, affect hormonal balance, and cancer.
Eventually, plastics that are littered, burned or even dumped into
engineered land-fills will degrade into these poisonous chemicals. Whether
it is ten years, or one hundred, these chemicals will eventually contaminate
our biosphere, farms, and families.
Did you know, when plastics are Let’s save the plastics!
burned the petrochemicals inside Plastics need to be put it the right place. PET bottles will last for three to
them combine to form dioxins? five hundred years if they are kept from sunlight. When they are packed
Dioxins are worse poisons and tightly, they make an amazing brick that can be used and reused for
contaminate both the air through building. They also become time capsules— a gift to future generations.
fumes and the earth and water
through ashes.
What will they think when they see yours?
This guide has been crafted to help you incorpo-rate VEBs into your class and school curricula. This document is based on two years of
working in selected Mt. Province schools to develop Ecobricks as a collaborative community technology.