So you think you know how to upcycle? Well one man, Raishee Sowa, took upcycling up a notch and created the self-sufficient Spiral Island. The island floats off the beaches of Quintana Roo Mexico and is held afloat by recycled bottles. Raishee (former carpenter, musician, artist) collected the bottles locally by hand around Cancun until he had enough to begin construction of his personal paradise. By binding them into bundles using old fish nets and placing bamboo and salvaged plywood over the top to make a surface, Raishee then began piling sand atop from the shore. The 250,000 or so plastic bottles and over three years work now support an island roughly the size of a basketball court, although he is constantly upgrading with hopes of floating out to sea and living in his own “country.”
Reishee has planted mangroves for shade and for sustenance he has added such vegetation as bananas, tomatoes, almonds, lemons, and palm trees of course. The repurposing doesn’t end there, he also fashioned a washing machine out of an old drum that rolls in the waves, he collects rain for fresh water, and has constructed a solar cooker for his meals. Not only is this a great story that sparks the imagination the lessons Reishee has taught us about the ability to create useful, unique, and sturdy living alternatives from the discarded objects around us is amazing. To be a self-sufficient entity (let alone on your hand made island!) takes diligence, care, and effort. However, with some thought and patience the simplest effort to reuse and repurpose can go along way.
What, no links?!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Island
Thanks for calling us out Justin, normally we try to provide more links. I would like to point out that we did provide a link called UPCYCLE in the upper right hand corner of the post to spiralisland.co.uk. That is where we ususally put the UPGRADE link (link to where you can buy), although I think we need to find a better, more prominent place for it. BTW, thanks for sharing your site, materialicio.us, we’re impressed!
this is incredible, he could give back the bottles to supermarkets in germany and would get 25 cent for each bottle = 62.500 euro (more than 96.000 dollar) for these 250.000 deposit bottles! CRAZY!
I didn’t notice that link. You’re right, maybe a more prominent place would be better. But I like your site as well. Keep on truckin’!
Wow, I just started in being able to build cheap solar panels, and this content on your site helps a lot, thanks for sharing!