Reuse, reduce and recycle have been the most efficient ways for waste reduction, waste management and getting a product with minimum investments. Tetrapacks, having the property of water resistance, are made use of in large quantities here at SacredGroves. The empty used tetrapacks are obtained from the segregated waste block from the Pour Tous store at Solar Kitchen. The free-of-cost tetrapacks are used in micro and macro projects at the Sacred Groves community.
We recently used this wonder material in several projects, two of which are highlighted here. The new toilet complex needed doors and wall panels. These had to be low-cost, easy to construct and durable. Tetrapacks offered the perfect solution. Off-cuts of used plywood strips were used for the framing of the doors and wall panels. Tetrapacks were overlapped and screwed together with a plywood frame to create an opaque waterproof surface. The doors and wall panels turned out to be lightweight elements which could be assembled easily on site.
Apart from this, the common house started to face a problem of water leakage inside the container, with the onset of monsoon. The initial idea of making a PVC channel failed during heavy rainfall. The volume of incoming water was too much for the channel resulting in overflow from the PVC gutter.
The only quick solution to this was to fix another gutter with a higher capacity below it. Tetrapacks were fixed to a metal wire frame with 3 layers of paper and an aluminium sheet layer. These fixed together showed remarkable water resisting qualities. The new gutter finally proved a successful idea to divert the over flowing water out of the common house.
It is amazing to see what one can accomplish using the materials which people throw away in their daily lives. There, indeed, is no such thing as waste