As the population grows in Ethiopia so does the demand for housing. According to private real estate developers, many Ethiopians cannot still afford to own homes because the high cost of construction translates to expensive property.
One Ethiopian man has come up with alternative creative means of constructing houses from recycled plastic bottles.
Dr. Adil Abdella says his plastic house is as stable as one built with traditional materials such as bricks.
“Anybody who comes up with an idea of how to reduce the cost and really deliver homes in a fast way has ample market here.” Tsedeke Yihunie Woldu, founder of Flintstone engineering said.
Abdella is ready to take advantage of this gap by presenting to the market a house that can be completed within 3 weeks using recycled plastic waste bottles.
“I just read one article written in India that uses these waste plastic bottles for building houses. I found the core point or the intersection point where the housing problem can be solved and the waste can be rescued against and add value to the society.” Abdella said.
With 61,000 waste plastic bottles he was able to construct a model 7 roomed house on his farm in Addis Ababa.
According to Abdella, the compact soil stuffed in the bottles makes the house strong, resistant to strong wind and earthquakes, as well as fire spread and bullet proof.
“In this whole process no steel has been used in the production process, no stone has been used so all what we used were waste plastic bottles soil, sand and cement. We have used nylon rope to tie the bottles.” He added.
According to him building this type of houses costs 70% less than a conventional building.
“We have built the house with 345,000 but the normal estimation with the consultants that we have got from eth engineer consultants was 1.2 million but this was built with 345,000.” Abdella said.
He hopes that the government will adopt his simple technology to build schools and hospitals.
Abdella is currently engaging with the ministry of science and technology and the ministry of construction to see how he can get into commercial real estate business.
