Three first-year students have partnered with Student Action for Sustainability to build a bookshelf made entirely of recycled plastic waste.
Hafsah Raja, Jana Aljallad and Ryan Purdum recently presented their initiative “Project Bookshelf ” to SAS at a weekly meeting in the library, according to the SAS’s announcement on Instagram.
The three are in the beginning stages of creating “ecobricks,” plastic bottles filled with smaller non-biodegradable plastic waste, which can be used to build structures like bookshelves and furniture.
Clean, dry plastic materials such as plastic cups, bags and film, snack wrappers, tags and labels, straws, cutlery and chip bags can be used to fill the plastic bottles, according to SAS.
“Project Bookshelf” will soon be creating drop off spaces for students to donate materials, according to Raja. The group will also be collaborating with another group project on campus creating eco-bricks for a communications class, according to their Instagram @URI_ecobricking.
“Right now, we’re collecting ecobricks and trying to make them ourselves,” Raja said. “But we’re going to put up buckets for people to throw away their bottles–clean bottles–and their trash, so that we can make them, instead of us having to dig through trash.”
The project was inspired by a larger volunteer project shown at an information session about studying abroad, according to Raja. Volunteers participating in the Give Volunteer program built a school out of eco-bricks in Laos.
“I just wrote about it in a reflection for my honors class, and my professor thought that this was something that we could do on a small scale here for a sustainability initiative related to Earth Day,” Raja said. “So we talked about it, and he encouraged me to actually promote ecobricks on campus.”
The group then started reaching out to potential collaborators on campus and making promotional flyers, then met with SAS, who Raja said welcomed the three and their idea.
“Eventually, naturally, we ended up with SAS, because they are the most prominent sustainability organization on campus,” Raja said. “We went there, and everyone was super sweet and now it’s kind of a collaborative thing.”
The bookshelf will require 300 ecobricks to complete, according to Aljallad. If enough materials are collected, the group hopes to build a table and chairs to create a “book nook” along with the bookshelf.
The group is aiming to collect all of the needed materials by J-term, and the project finished by Earth Day, according to Raja. The finished bookshelf will travel to different locations on campus for the community to use.
“There’s an event on the quad for Earth Day,” Aljallad said. “We can showcase it there. In terms of a permanent living space, I think that this is kind of going to be something that moves around a little bit.”
The group invites students to get involved by creating their own ecobricks, according to Raja and Aljallad. A tutorial showing how to build your own ecobrick can be found on Instagram at @URI_ecobricking.
The Student Action for Sustainability meets on Wednesdays at 4:30 in the XR Lab in the library, according to their Instagram @URI_sas.
