A Day in TEMESI Village: Bricks from Plastic Bags (part 5)

Hey Greensters!! 

Patricia here :

Today, I’m going to talk to you about making bricks out of old plastic bags. As we all know, plastics are one of the hardest things to decompose. It takes around 20 – 1000 years for it to decompose. It is very hard, but not impossible. 

When we went to Temesi, they showed one way to make use of old plastic bags which is to turn them into bricks. How? Good question. Here’s how it’s done:

Step 1: We make molds out of iron plates. If you like, you may add motifs on the mold.

Step 2: Collect plastics such as plastic bags, plastic bags of food scraps, PE (polyethylene) type of plastic and so on.

Step 3: Set up the plastics into the molds until evenly filled. For 1 sack containing old plastic scraps can be molded into bricks with the size of 20 cm x 20 cm and with the thickness of 3 cm.

Step 4: Put inside an oven that has been preheated.

Step 5: The plastic will melt by itself

Step 6: Remove the mold containing molten plastic from the oven. Let it cool until the liquid plastic is not hot and becomes solid.

Step 7: Once it is solid, flip the mold over so that the solid plastic/ brick can be removed from the mold.

Step 8: The solid plastic which we refer to as 'bricks from recycled plastic' can be used to decorate walls, taped to the wall or floor mounted.

Pak Kadek Satra said that the manufacture of ceramics recycled plastic is just there in Singaraja (one region in Bali island) only at this time.

Advantages of bricks from recycled plastics:

• It has a hard and strong texture 
• If exposed to direct sunlight, the brick won’t crack. 
• If stepped on, the brick won’t break 
• This brick can stand heat and coldness (hot weather and rainy weather)

Awesome right? Now we know how to recycle plastic bags on our own.

Thank you for reading and have nice day.


Best regards,

Patricia TGTI

(grade 8 student)