Hug It Forward
Bottle School Project
Hug It Forward is a grass-roots organization that facilitates education and awareness by empowering communities in Latin America to build “bottle schools”.
Bottle schools are schools built using “eco-bricks”: plastic bottles stuffed with inorganic trash. Entire communities come together to build a more sustainable educational infrastructure for their future.
Hug It Forward’s goal is to share the bottle school technology so that communities all over the world can build their own bottle school.
Since October 2009, Hug It Forward has empowered 68 communities in Guatemala and two in El Salvador to build their own bottle school.
The foundations, columns and beams are made from concrete reinforced with rebar.
It takes around 6,500 eco-bricks to build a two-classroom school.
What Is A Bottle School?
Bottle schools are schools built using plastic bottles stuffed with inorganic trash. Bottle schools are built using tried and tested post and beam construction. The foundations, columns and beams are made from concrete reinforced with rebar. The difference with traditional construction is that instead of cinder-blocks, the walls are made using “eco-bricks”. Bottle schools are much cheaper to build than traditional schools, they clean up the environment, teach lessons about environmental sustainability, and involve the entire community in their construction, resulting in a sense of pride and ownership.
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