What do you do with plastic waste when you know that it's detrimental to the environment and is resulting in its rampant degradation? There are no easy answers to this but reusing and recycling is one way of going about it and a couple from the state of Uttar Pradesh has set a good example with their simple initiative.?
Plastic bottles are used widely in India as well as several other countries, and several attempts have been made in the past to reuse them.?
HINDUSTAN TIMES
Now, as per a report in the Hindustan Times, a four-room homestay has been constructed near Nainital using over 26,000 bottles. The report highlights that the house has been built by Deepti Sharma and her husband, who wanted to send out a positive message to the public. They hail from Meerut in UP.??
They wanted the people to know that the Himalayas are fast becoming a dumping ground for plastic bottles whereas there are other ways of using them.??
¡°We travel a lot to the mountains and every time we go to a place, we are just disappointed to see the amount of plastic waste that is generated in the mountains without any scope of recycling or proper disposal. That is when it struck us that we wanted to do something using plastic that is generated in the mountains. We believe that either people should recycle plastic in the mountains or take back the plastic waste generated by them, but not harm the mountains with all the waste,¡± Sharma was quoted as saying by the Hindustan Times.
Now that their project has been completed, they want to reach out to more people and spread awareness about the reuse of plastic bottles and hope that their example will inspire several others to prevent environmental degradation.?
Abhishek Anand, the co-owner of the house, told IANS: "We bought land and started building the house in February 2017 and it took us almost one-and-a-half years to construct the whole place."
He said that during a trip to Lansdowne in 2016, they had decided that they wanted to have a house in the mountains and not in Noida or Ghaziabad.
"That is when we started planning this project and we bought the land in 2017 and started work. The cost of building the house was nearly Rs 1.5 lakh, including labour and raw materials. Over 26,000 bottles were used to make the four-room home stay," said Deepti.
She said that used?plastic?bottles were found in abundance in the mountains since tourists rarely bother to carry back the?plastic?waste.
According to the couple, they travel frequently to the mountains and every time they go to a place, they are just disappointed to see the amount of?plastic?waste that is generated in the mountains without any scope of recycling or proper disposal.
"That is when it struck us that we wanted to do something using?plastic?that is generated in the mountains. We believe that either people should recycle?plastic?in the mountains or take back the?plastic?waste generated by them, but not harm the mountains with all the waste," said Deepti Sharma.
The couple used?plastic?bottles to build patches of walls which were then joined together to make a whole wall. For one patch of wall, 100 bottles were tied together and then covered with mesh wire to keep it intact. Apart from?plastic, they used old tyres for the flooring and stairs.
Whiskey bottles were used to make lamps for the house, which can accommodate eight people. The place has four different rooms of 10 feet by 11 feet.
The couple is also building a system for rainwater harvesting in this house and want to construct a 10,000-litre tank where the rainwater could be harvested for the entire village.
Talking of the benefits of the unique house, besides the low cost, the couple said that they were not only able to reuse?plastic?but also found that?plastic?helps in better insulation from cold.
Indeed, small steps such as these at the personal level can go a long way in minimising the impact of plastic waste. They also help involve the people in the fight to protect the environment, which, afterall, impacts all.?
India is eyeing to curb single-use plastics on a massive scale, with PM Modi asserting that it should become a mass movement.?
With IANS Inputs