Step 1 of our Bottle Brick Spiral Herb Garden

 

My son-in-law Micah Weiss loves building things and took an interest in solving my multi-year dilemma about virtually every bottlebrick construction project I had lined up failed. Small NGOs have a constant turn-over of staff. Public schools are underfunded. Our champion at a summer camp moved on and the hundreds of bricks were orphaned. COVID. Etc.

Micah wanted to build an herb garden and when I told him about the permaculture spiral design he was intrigued. 

He evened up a circular spot and I laid out about 5+ 20 oz bottle bricks. (Step 1).

My mother's day gift was to mortar two tiers of bricks to create the holder for the spiral.

Micah mixed up on bag of mortar. What's the difference between cement and mortar? Not much!

We didn't worry about the bottle cap end since it will be covered by the soil we add.

The wide variety of colors in the bottle's bottoms is actually pretty cool looking!

We used trowels and glopped the mortar over the bottles, pushing it in between them to hold them in place, and adding more on top to create a base for the next tier. The bottle bricks are sitting right on top of the soil to increase drainage. 

Then the three of us repeated the process, adding extra mortar on top to leave a fairly smooth base for what comes next, building the spiral. The whole process took less than an hour, not counting five years worth of bricks!

My initial opinion was to eventually cement the exterior of the bottle brick bottoms but we all kind of like the way they look.

To be continued.

Camp Ramah's Cob/Bottle Brick Bench

 Kudos to Cori Gottesman who shephereded this project to completion at Camp Ramah in Elkins Park.

In Cori's words: "It took a long time, including a Covid summer in which we didn’t make much progress, but it’s finished! It’s a shade structure that we needed… there’s room for more wooden benches so a bunk  of kids plus counselors can sit under it. It’ll also be good for kids who need a social or physical break without leaving the garden. The bench is also right in front of a wildflower and herbal bed, both areas where there’s lots of butterfly/bird activity.

"Thanks for bringing the bottle brick project to us. I think the kids learned a lot and kids over 4 summers had experience building bottle bricks and building the structure."

Kudos, Cori!

 

MLK at Or Hadash 2020

Vivien Kane of Or Chadash created a perfect poster!

Mitzvah Day at Or Hadash in Fort Washington featured two great upcycling opportunities.
Along with Habonim Dror/Camp Galil, we collected bags of non-biodegradable dry, clean waste and empty bottles.

Kids of all ages, plus parents, seemed really captivated to sit down and stuff bottles, as we pushed them to COMPRESS.COMPRESS.COMPRESS.

We encouraged them to give their bottle bricks the standing test.

Camp Galil is envisioning a project whereby every activity during the year will include a bottle bricking portion, to move to #zerowaste.

At this summer's camp, it may become one of their scheduled daily activities. Eat, sing, bless, and bottle brick. Their large assembly hall needs some accoustical help, and they are considering lining the walls with bottle bricks. This would become a visual testimony to how much waste we generate, and also at what rate, as each column of bottles goes up on the wall. It's a perfect solution to the problem of non-uniform bottle sizes; it's challenging to come up with enough empty bottles all the same shape and size. Eventually they will have enough of any given size for one vertical column, and the columns can each be different size. The more surface area, the more sound absorption, in theory!

Or Hadash also participates in a Plarn Woven Mat project. Plastic bags are cut into strips and tied together, creating PlasticYarn. It was great fun watching these boys absorbed in weaving.

Bottlebrick Keyhole at Sayre High School: It Happened!

Zarif Robinson wingspans the progress on the keyhole garden
 built over the summer at Sayre High School, West Philly

And there it was: After two-plus years of neighborhood environistas compacting miscellaneous plastic into 20-oz. soft-drink bottles, a keyhole garden arose in the garden atrium at Sayre High School at 58th and Walnut streets. Eric Sherman, a nutrition educator for the Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative working at Sayre, made it happen! 

Sherman had been planning the project since he agreed to take our stash of 600 bottle bricks. Over the summer, he and his college interns worked with a group of high school students on the keyhole garden, now waist-high, a U-shaped structure that will eventually be filled with all manner of ingredients to become rich soil. (When planted, a keyhole garden can be easily maintained from the “keyhole” space in the center.) 

The students described their construction experience at a celebration of summer projects connected to the University of Pennsylvania’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships. “Keyholes require a lot of cement. They save the environment. They are creative, very messy, beautifying, and decrease pollution.” Eric and his crew built with cement; the students really enjoyed learning and participating in the construction itself.

Meanwhile, at Ramah Day Camp in Elkins Park, nature educator Corri Gottesman collaborated with Wendy Smith and her family on a bottle brick garden bench. Wendy’s husband, Michael Posner, *really* likes an aloe drink that comes in square bottles. Wendy recruited other camp families to start bottle bricking for the Ramah garden, and by the start of camp they had several hundred bottle bricks at the ready. 

Gottesman elected to build with cob, a natural cementing material. Campers loved mixing mud, sand, and straw, slapping it on the bottles, and gradually building a solid bench. Construction will continue into the fall.

The Weavers Way Environment Committee has been at the bottle brick project for several years now. Here are some lessons learned:

It’s a long way from an idea to a reality. I wrote about bottle bricks and keyhole gardens in my book on effective tools for poverty alleviation. It seemed to me that bottle bricks would be great for building a keyhole garden. However, I don’t live in the developing world, so my theory would have to be proven in our community. Fortunately, the Weavers Way Environmental Committee folks could see the potential and many of them quickly adopted the personal habit of brick-making. But we needed a partner. . . . 

Matching supply and demand is hard. People were making the bricks, but it took quite some time to find a “project manager.” Logistical and labor challenges kept our first two partners from being able to follow through. We are very grateful to Eric and Corri!

People’s ideas about following instructions vary widely. Bottles bricks of all shapes and sizes started appearing, not just the 20-oz. size we had requested. Bricks need to be UNIFORM. Moving forward, we will heartily discourage weird sizes and shapes, unless someone can commit to making a lot of them. (Hello, Michael and Wendy!)

Our suggestion to other project initiators: collect the empties you want to use and distribute them, along with directions.

Keeping track of inventory is hard. We stored bricks in boxes, bins and crates at several different venues. Bad idea! It was really difficult to discern how many we had. In the future, we’ll be using a standard size box with handholds. They will be easy to stack and the brick count for each box will be the same. Sure, it’s Warehouse 101; now we’ve learned our lesson. 

People are committed – dare I say addicted?— to bottle brick making. It is a hands-on, satisfying solution to the problem of what to do with the multitude of little discards in our lives. Moving forward, we need to do more projects. Have one to pitch? We are eager to hear your idea!

Betsy Teutsch is a Weavers Way Working Member. Contact her at bpteutsch@gmail.com.

Like a Hand and Glove

Well, look at that. Now we have thick, flat, hollow tiles!

One of the challenges we discovered in our prototype is that the depth of the bottle caps requires a really thick layer of Thinset. And, the thickset inside the tiles didn't dry very quickly.

As if by serendipity, we discovered that the disks from peel-cap jugs pop RIGHT INTO the solid color screw caps. As if they were desigined to do this.

So we are collecting those too. Actually, tons of people were already contributing them, but now we are actively seeking them. Their technical name is snap tops, but no one knows that.

What we now have is a thick, hollow flat back tile. We could put more material inside it. The smaller screw tops from aseptic boxes of milk and soup also seem to fit well, to fill space.

We are learning!

Bottle Cap Mosaic Collection: Amazing Colors Are Adding Up!

The bottle caps are adding up! White is the big winner.

Our goal for the mosaic mural on FoodMoxie's Keyhole Garden (built of bottle bricks) is 5000 bottle caps. I suspect we are close, but since we likely will not have a keyhole garden to adorn until late spring 2017, there is time to collect many more bottle caps than that. What is not used can be moved forward to a future project.

Sorting them by color has been the next logical step. Many of the donated caps have writing or embossing on them, so those will be donated to Gimme5.  We are accumulating lots of the desirable completely solid caps. And, we have a few donors who are saving tops from Ensure Nutrient Supplement - they have an aluminum plate on the bottle caps that is relflective and very cool.

Open bins are the most efficient way to toss bottle caps in,
by color.  The color distribution will impact Eurhi's design.

These metalic caps will add sparkle and pop
to the design. The deeper liquor bottle tops are
great, though we're not sure about how varying
depth will work out.

I have collected tubs to store the caps. The most common, after white, are dark blue, yellow and red.  We are also collecting the peel off disk style bottle caps, as backing.

There are many shades of orange plastic caps, many from citrus drinks

There is a bin/tub at Across the Way,
Mt. Airy, for dropping off caps.
Thanks for all your contributions!

Bottle Cap Mosaic Workshop - Global Ed Forum

At the Global Ed Forum, 2016, here in Philly - my workshop participants came up with a really cool design, playing with my growing collection of bottle caps!