Green activists to build a Taj with plastic/polythene waste in Agra

Green activists will attempt to construct a Taj Mahal with plastic and polythene waste at the Etmauddaula viewpoint park on the Yamuna river here.

At a workshop here by NGO Unfold Foundation to train activists on making eco-bricks with plastic bottles, members of the River Connect Campaign announced they would work on putting together a model of the Taj Mahal with these building blocks. The efforts could take around six months.

Eco-bricks are made of plastic bottles that are stuffed with polythene bags and sealed.

"This is a highly cost effective waste-control exercise based on common sense. We collect used plastic bottles, pack them with packing material, gutkha pouches and polythene, make the bottles air tight and seal them. The bottles become rock solid and are good enough to last 500 years," Dr Meeta Kulshreshtha, a surgeon, and coordinator of Unfold Foundation, told IANS.

"If one person can give us one bottle filled with waste material, in one year, we will have 20 lakh such eco-bricks to build any solid structure," Programme Convener Harvijay Bahia said.

River Connect Campaign member Chaturbhuj Tiwari said: "Every week when we clean a patch of Yamuna riverbed, we gather heaps of polythene and used plastic material. If we can manage to fill all this in plastic bottles and jars, we could not only help solve a major urban problem, but have material ready for a structure to be used by the public. Tree guards, benches and stools are among the products that can be made."

The Taj city daily generates around a thousand tons of civic garbage, most of it plastic and polythene waste.

"If each household starts filling up bottles with used polythene bags and sliced plastic, we could easily prevent pollution of rivers and water bodies and also avoid choking of drains and sewer lines," social activist Shravan Kumar Singh said.

(Brij Khandelwal can be reached at brij.k@ians.in)

--IANS

brij/vm