Meet man who built 3-bedroom bungalow with 14,800 plastic bottles

A Nigerian man has been able to build a house with a new level of improvisation that earned him accolades.

Yahaya Ahmed built a 3-bedroom house in Kaduna with nothing other than 14,800 plastic bottles, which have all been sand-filled to be like bricks.

He is an engineer and the director of a non-governmental organisation, Developmental Association of Renewable Energies in Nigeria (DARE).

According to Ahmed, his organisation built the house to encourage recycling of waste materials, create jobs and ensure a safer environment in Nigeria.

The structure has three rooms, a kitchen and a toilet.

He explained to journalists that his workers filled the plastic bottles with sand and linked them at the neck by an intricate network of strings.

In his words; “It’s the cheapest house that everyone can construct without spending much money because the building materials are available on the streets and trash dump centres.

“It is 20 times stronger than brick walls houses and can last for over 300 years if constructed properly and carefully. It is fireproof, bulletproof, earthquake-resistant and can adapt to all kinds of climate changes, desertification and deforestation.

“It is the cheapest house to build in this generation with waste plastic bottles on the streets polluting our environment and causing more problems like flood and other disasters in the communities.”

Speaking on the design of the house, he said; “The circular shape adds strength to the walls, while providing a very artistic and pleasing appearance.

“Any person with masonry skills can be used as labour in the construction of one of these homes. We have trained many youth and we are still training more youth and adults the various ways of constructing these houses across the country and some parts of Africa.”

On why he chose to execute the project, Ahmed said: “We want to reduce the volume of plastic that is polluting our environment and causing diseases and other disasters. We have plastic houses in some parts of Africa but this is the first one in the entire region of black Africa.

“Our joy is to train more youth the skills of this kind of housing so as to save our streets from the plastic bottles dominating our rivers and ponds, causing flood and other disasters.”