Tired of Living on Earth? Build Your Own Island!
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 11.17.05
We couldn't make this stuff up: this man, Reishee Sowa of Puerto Aventuras, Mexico, apparently grew tired of trying to live self-sufficiently on dry land, and did what any of us would have done. He built his own island out of used pop bottles. 250,000 of them, plus some construction leftovers and bags of leaves, make up "his island," though he's quick to point out that it's technically not an island by traditional standards. "You see not even the president is allowed his own island in Mexico," he says, "but technically I don’t have an island, I have an eco space-creating ship."
Granted, the idea may seem a bit wacky to some of you dear readers, and though it's not entirely practical on a global scale for each person to have their own island, we do admire his ingenuity and innovative spirit. Our earth is two-thirds water, after all.
But seriously, Reishee Sowa has done something pretty incredible, and he really has a passion for a better world. "We are being faced with a population explosion and maybe building islands is the answer. This island is an example of something that could be built worldwide. You could be totally self sufficient with it. All is as natural as possible. I catch rain water for showers, the toilet naturally composts, and you can grow your own produce," he says. While we aren't sure we'll be able to solve the world's problems by building floating islands from recycled pop bottles, it's the spirit of his work that we like best. He's able to live self-sufficiently in his own version of paradise, and that sounds pretty good to us. Thanks to Geoff for the tip! ::Playa Maya News
Cool. I want one. Now to get myself to Mexico.
Yeah, it's a very cool idea, but. Those pop bottles will fill with condensate water over time, and the island will start to sink (and THAT ain't green, it's just a mess). There has to be a way to empty the bottles periodically. There is a book, "Handmade Houseboats" by Russell Conder, that explains everything you ever wanted to know about handmade floating structures, be they boats, floating houses, or mini islands.
In reference to the comment made by Justin, the island will not have to sink because apparently it was destroyed by a hurricane in 2005; which would be very sad because it is an awesome idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Island
Huh? A closed bottle will have a finite amount of moisture in the trapped air. You wouldn't spontaneously get more over time. Even that little bit shouldn't produce any condensation since the bottle and the trapped air will both be as cold as the water its submersed in. You could only get condesation inside the bottle if you inserted warm humid air and the bottle was cold.
Regarding the closed bottle accumulating water (posted by doug) Reclosed bottles are seldom 100% air tight, and in aquatic enviroment it is not inconceivable that water would migrate through the seal via capillary action.
Just a thought.
Even if water did collect in the bottles, the way he strapped them to the structure makes maintenance a very simple thing. He reused cirtus net bags to hold the bottles, so simply remove a bag, empty the bottles, refill the bag and reattach.
One at a time.
As well, if bouyancy was lost, it would be no big deal to add another bag or three to the structure.
Does anybody have any information regarding the fate of Richies island and if he plans to rebuild? I wouldn't mind lending him a hand.
Does anybody have any information regarding the fate of Richies island and if he plans to rebuild? I wouldn't mind lending him a hand.
I think that Richie's floating island is awesome. Just the fact that he created his own self sufficient island is amazing to me. Hats off to him.
colin dunn i am thrilled by ur idea........
and was shocked that how people around the world can think so similar
i am drashan .....m a fashion designer..... from new delhi,india
............
please leme know if you have any plans to open a resort cum craft based cum dense jungle kind of organisation in india.........
have a nice time
water will fill in the bottles over a LONG period of time... its not something that you would have to do more than once a year... but even though plastic is a solid, water molecules can get through and over time will start to fill the bottles... but the empting bottles idea would solve the problem... the man is a genious
That's pretty slick! ;-)
"Tired of Living on Earth? Build Your Own Island!"
What... An Island can't be on Earth? C.Dunn is a moron.
What is the great idea here? First of all, he removed 250,000 recyclable bottles from the supply chain and now more bottles have to be created from non-recyclable materials. Next, he built an obviously unstable craft from it and put it into the ocean and a hurricane scattered this trash everywhere. And the chemicals that leach out of this plastic when it is in contact with seawater for extended periods of time have already been shown to be in high enough concentrations in our oceans (due to the dumping of trash) to possibly be part of sea life population declines.
Just because an idea is radical, sexy and took a lot of hard work does not mean it is good.
Rather than empty existing bottles, why not continue to add bottles? By being able to readily obtain 250,000 of them, he's proven that they are easily obtainable. It wouldn't necessarily be any more work than emptying the original bottles, and the filled bottles would eventually add to the mass of the "island," making it less likely to be destroyed in a storm.
These are small potatoes, er bottles, though. They're just as likely to be punctured or deteriorate over time as they are to be filled to capacity through capillary action.
The majority of comments appear to assume Reishee's island is not an island. Instead, some kind of floating pop bottle barge(?)
But if it is (make that- was) an island, unauthorized land fill along an ecologically fragile shoreline seems less like responsible recycling than an environmentally insensitive, predatory land grab.
Just where did all those pop bottles end up going when his "island-barge" broke up?
I've been considering this.
How many improper references can you stick into a single article? I don't know but this one seems to be going for a record.
http://www.bsalert.com/
His artificial island idea is fundamentally flawed. It has a very high degree of coupling to wave energy. Taking it out on the high seas would be suicidal. Such islands can only exist in sheltered coastal waters. See http://seastead.org They have thought this out, and yes, they have a use for a large number of pop bottles.
Guys, this was in a lagoon, not on a ecologically fragile shoreline. The hurricane destroyed the island, but that doesn't mean all the pop bottles got blown into the sea.
The 250,000 "recyclable" pop bottles were unlikely to be recycled anyway, as tons more are thrown into landfills than recycled. (Watch penn & teller's Bullshit). Even if they were recycled as plastic, they wouldn't be recycled as plastic bottles. All plastic bottles are made from new plastic, so "new" 250,000 plastic bottles would have had to have been created regardless.
Regardless, recycling them means re-using them, so technically he recycled them by using them for floatation. Similar to how people used to recycle plastic milk bottles for use in home construction.
I just love how some people can find fault with anything. If someone developed a way to turn landfill waste into pure energy to be reformed into different matter (aka star trek), you'd find a way to claim that this is bad because the landfills are now an ecological niche for some animal.
I have to agree with "Green is Hard", this is not an ecologically sound idea or a properly engineered project.
I LOVE this idea! Great job Collin
Umm... just to further nitpick... and to reiterate Bartlett... Building more land (which is not feasible on a large scale anyway... at some point you're going to run out of water to build on) CAN'T solve an exponential growth problem. The only way it can be solved is by STOPPING THE GROWTH. :-)
"The only way it can be solved is by STOPPING THE GROWTH."
Good idea, Geoff. STOP HAVING SEX.
Typical environmentalist, take trash, deposit into body of water, storm comes along and destroys stupid idea, now more trash in body of water than before.
Great for the environment! Let's think ahead people.
Congratulations on realizing a very common dream in a very unusual way! I think this could be instructive to planners who seem to want all trash to "just go away," when much of it has positive value if seen as a resource instead of a problem.
I've wondered recently where such efforts went that used discarded landfill materials in similar ways; e.g. there was once a pilot program in New York City that proposed to create an island of some significant size, according to an American magazine of the 1970's. (Perhaps they didn't either think to or have a workable way of sorting out the heavier-than-water trash from the rest? Too bad they didn't have a sorting machine such as developed by a Western Iowan that makes 5-6 seperated-by-composition piles.)
This concept, if done on a much larger scale; even if it created an uninhabitable island, if of sufficient size and strength it might reinforce an existant barrier reef or compose a completely man-made one that would absorb some of the impact carried by a hurricane headed toward shore. Not a substitute for a natural delta, though, to be sure.
i am a civil engineering student about to graduate college. I have just put together the plans to build the foundation with plastic bottles, cans, soil, grassa nd such. I will start building ASAP in the ocean lab to test designs.
so see you on the new island
With all the turmoil and uncertainty in this country (usa)and the world these days I have to say this looks very tempting. I wonder if he has Coronas?
Dude, the aztecs did this ages ago. And they didn't need pop bottles or plywood
This story was published on treehugger last year. I think that Richie is a visionary.
I can't believe the amount of negative results there have been to this story, like a feeding frenzy.
A lot of contributors seem to feel that he was naive and misguided. To them I would say, that it's easy to make yourself look good by making someone else look bad. Try to look at the bigger picture, to me, it's not really about the concept or logistics of the project. It's not even really about the island.
I admire Richie because the guy had what he thought was a good idea and he did something about it.
He didn't sit around complaining on the internet about how crap everything is, and saying "what if", he carried it through to fruition.
The fact that he did it means that now all the people with imaginations have a working model to draw inspiration from, learn from and a forum for discussion.
Talking about it is easy, criticising is easy, to change is easy but to improve is difficult. Channel the negative thoughts into positive thoughts, come up with your own plan of how to make a difference and do it!
Bravo Richie