People often recycle every piece of clean plastic they can, but not all plastic can be recycled. Small pieces of plastic being recycled may actually hurt the Earth more than help. When being recycled, these microplastics often fly away and end up in the ocean. A bottle brick or an eco brick is a solution to these microplastics, flying away and not being recycled. Ecobricking is putting small pieces of plastic which are unable to be recyclable into a bigger container. A bottle brick is a plastic bottle that includes smaller pieces of plastic, all this plastic together gets built up and creates a brick that can be used to build. This is a way to limit the waste of single-use plastics and allows plastics to get reused. These bottles do not get thrown away or recycled, there are certain organizations that use them for certain projects. Bottle bricks are used for many things including the walls for houses, flower beds, garden benches, and play areas. Bottle bricks are not a fix to plastic but it allows the plastic to be repurposed and not thrown into the ocean or landfills. Ecobricking is a way to become more conscious of the plastic we use. Any sort of plastic, styrofoam, cellophane, etc. can be put into these bottles as tightly as possible creating a brick. These bottle bricks with so much plastic in them are able to become strong and hard to become a building block. Normal single-use plastic takes about 450 years to decompose, meaning every single piece of plastic created is still on this Earth. Ecobricks are able to combat this and use single-use plastics more than just one time. Ecobricks are able to reduce the net surface area of the bottle by a thousandfold, which means it is safe from potential degradation. This allows the ecobrick to be used over and over again. Ecobricks are also able to save plastic from being thrown into landfills. Having plastic in landfills and burning plastic creates many problems including toxic gas, ash, and emissions. By packing single-use plastic into Eco Bricks, we are able to keep these plastics from being burned. In all, ecobricks are great ways in order to reduce the effects of single-use plastics.
Sources: https://www.ecobricks.org/why/
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