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Company showcases plastic house at Building Expo
– says setting-up factory here could see people “getting paid for trash”
By Shervin Belgrave
Kaieteur News – South Atlantic, a local company together with its Colombian partner, Caña Dulce, is introducing houses made entirely of plastic to Guyana.
Alphonso De Armas, CEO of South Atlantic posing for a photo in front of the plastic house on display at Building Expo 2022
Currently on display at Building Expo 2022, is a three-bedroom model house constructed with bricks made only of recycled plastic. Speaking with the media, South Atlantic’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Alphonso De Armas related that these houses are not only a way to recycle plastic but they are more affordable, quicker to assemble and very durable.
Emphasising how quickly a plastic house can be assembled, Alphonso said, “We started building it (referring to the three bedroom model on display) on Thursday night when the container arrived and we have finished the structure already in just a few days.”
The model house on display at the expo, according to De Armas, measures 600 square feet and can be procured at a cost of $5.7M. He said that the plastic bricks, beams and other materials needed to assemble the house are all pre-fab and can be imported from Colombia.
De Armas highlighted too that customers can choose to make changes to their structure should the need arise and do so at very affordable cost. He revealed too that if they want they can finish by plastering the walls with concrete but it is not really necessary.
He went on to explain, that the homes are actually prefab so a customer cannot head to a warehouse and buy a few plastic bricks, instead they can head into the company and the experts will work with them to get a design that suit their taste. The materials would then be manufactured in Colombia and imported to Guyana where it would be assembled
He mentioned, however, that plans are in the pipeline to establish a factory here and this move could actually see locals getting paid to pick-up plastic trash from the streets.
“Yes we are thinking about setting up a factory here… We don’t think that Guyana produces all the plastic that will be used to build a ton of these houses but we can import the plastic, the garbage from other countries and introduce a whole recycling system in the Caribbean where garbage is generated in those countries and we could turn them into houses, health centres, classrooms, industrial storage facilities and imagine a Guyana where you can collect three tons of plastic off the street for housing and you pay people for it,” De Armas shared.
It reportedly took three tons of plastic to construct the house on display at the expo. De Armas also explained the industrial process of turning plastics into durable homes that are fire retardant and cool to live in. It begins with the collection of the plastics which is then crushed and heated until it gets thick before adding several additives to make it strong, durable and fire retardant. The heated plastic with the additives is then added into moulds to make the bricks, beams and other materials needed to assemble a house.
The Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) has since signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with South Atlantic for the construction of some these houses here in Guyana and, according to De Armas, persons interested can obtain one through CH&PA.
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