Lakeland College's Enviro Club is championing the fight against plastic waste with a challenge.

With increasing reports of wildlife - on land and sea - consuming and dying from plastic pollution, the student-run club challenges everyone at Lakeland to build an ecobrick.

“The idea is to grab a regular plastic bottle and fill it with plastics that are not generally recyclable. Instead of it ending up in landfills or stuck in waterways, we are making them useful by compacting them in a bottle to make an ecobrick. We will then build structures with these bricks,” says Jeanette McGlynn, a club member and first-year environmental sciences student in the wildlife and fisheries conservation major.

Ecobricks are popular in other parts of the world, including South Africa where they have been used to build schools and houses. This plastic building material can also be used to build tables, planters and other items. The Enviro Club plans to create and collect enough ecobricks over the summer to build a couch in the fall.

“Generally when people recycle, they get that feel good feeling. What is cool about this recycling project is that they will see what they've made with it,” says McGlynn, an international student who came to Lakeland from England. 

The Enviro Club encourages everyone to build one ecobrick using either a 500 mL, 710 mL or two-litre clean plastic bottle. They can be filled with clean non-biodegradable and non-recyclable plastics. “Put it on your counter and every time you have a piece of plastic, clean and dry it, and then start stuffing your bottle,” says McGlynn. Stuffing the bottle is easier if the plastics are cut into smaller pieces and are densely packed from the bottom to the top.

A completed ecobrick should weigh one third of the volume of the bottle and should feel like a solid brick. Instructions for making an ecobrick are available on Lakeland College's app and the School of Environmental Sciences Facebook page.

According to statistics shared by the Enviro Club:

• Plastic products around the world amounted to 335 million metric tons in 2016, of which half were single-use items.
• Worldwide, approximately four trillion plastic bags are used each year - only one per cent is recycled.
• Every year, 78 million tons of plastic packaging is produced; 32 per cent of it ends up in oceans, which is the same as dumping one garbage truck of plastic into the ocean every minute.

“Animals will eat this plastic, doesn't matter what size it is. It's found in their stomachs, so this project helps wildlife," says McGlynn. "Plus, plastic can be used to build lasting things without having to use energy to make these ecobricks. It's stuff that we have here, why not use it?”

Completed ecobricks can be dropped off with environmental sciences instructor Robin Lagroix-McLean or placed in room MB101 over the summer.

Photos: Top, Jeanette McGlynn and other Enviro Club members encouraged students, staff and community members to build ecobricks in Alumni Hall on March 26. Bottom, Nancy Shalay, a member of Vermilion's environment committee, tried her hand at making an ecobrick. A two-litre ecobrick bottle can be filled with 510 grams of plastic waste and a 710 mL ecobrick bottle can contain 240 grams.