Ours is a disposable economy. It’s often cheaper to throw something away and buy a new version than it is to spend the time and money getting it repaired. With the invention and now ubiquitous use of plastics, it’s even easier to fill up landfills and dumps with the detritus of life. But what about people who are taking trash and turning it into something useful, something that will benefit one or more people as well as the planet? Before you set your trash cans out for the regular Indianapolis garbage removal service, check out the amazing things people are doing with stuff we normally throw away.
Building Houses
Need a house but can’t afford one? How about building it on your own using items easily found in mounds at the dump? It is perfectly possible to build a solid, insulated, safe home out of old car tires, glass bottles, and plastic bottles. In New Mexico, earthships have developed into quite a phenomenon. Entirely self-sustaining homes are built around a foundation of old tires filled with rammed earth. These fortresses include walls made of bottle-embedded cement, plenty of dirt for support and insulation, and lots of ingenuity. Solar panels and wind turbines provide electricity, and thoughtful design and orientation allows earthships to maximize the usefulness of sunlight during all months of the year. Clever rainwater collection and filtering systems let each drop of water get used four times with no waste. You can also fit an entire greenhouse full of growing food in the front of the home. Fresh tomatoes in the dead of winter? No problem.
The old tires filled with dirt and insulative earth backfill are so effective that owners can completely forego paying heating and cooling bills all year. And those otherwise useless glass bottles embedded in the walls become glowing artwork as the sun shines through them. It takes anywhere from several hundred to 5000 tires to make an earthship, depending on how large you want the completed home to be. There is no limit on the number of glass bottles you use. While there are other, more expensive elements needed to complete a real earthship, many of the materials are free for the taking (always ask first, of course) from dumps and landfills or picked up in parks and fields. This makes building a house out of garbage economical and planet-friendly.
Your Own Island
After collecting hundreds of plastic bottles littered on the beaches of Cancun, Mexico, Raishee Sowa decided to make something more of them than a few cents apiece: he decided to build himself an island. Collecting empty plastic bottles for three years yielded enough of them that when he encased them in fishing nets, he had the base of an island about the size of a tennis court. Bamboo and plywood laid on top of the bundles of bottles completed the base, and boatfuls of sand dumped on the plywood made it a beach. He built a hut on top of the sand and planted native bushes and trees and a garden for beauty and food. The Mexican government was so impressed that they granted the island status as territory of Mexico. If Sowa wanted to expand, all he had to do was relieve the beach of more trash to make his plastic bottle bundles for a bigger base.
If you refuse to drink anything but bottled water, consider the island you could build for yourself, whether on a lake or on the ocean, like Sowa.
Be an Artist
If you’ve ever wanted to get creative, using trash as a basis for art has become an honored tradition and profession. When it comes to sculptures or usable pieces of furniture, just about anything considered garbage is fair game— as long as it doesn’t pose actual danger from poisoning or injury, of course. Get your feet wet by making a lamp out of something broken, for instance. A little soap and water and paint can fix up whatever it is you have selected, and some simple lamp works bought from a lighting store or hobby shop will allow you to put together a one-of-a-kind piece of functional art. Same goes for wall hangings made of discarded metal bits and widgets or furniture repurposed from everything from cardboard to old CDs. Who says today’s frosty canned beverage can’t be tomorrow’s funky new conversation piece?
Indianapolis garbage removal will never look quite the same once you catch the recycling and repurposing bug. When you can think of how to turn trash into treasure, you end up benefiting yourself and everyone around you.