Rebuild Nepal Eco Construction Programme

Nepal

The Nepali government has confirmed that the death toll from the 7.8 magnitude quake, which devastated the densely populated Kathmandu Valley on April 25, has risen above 6,200, with more than 14,000 injured.
Hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed, rendering people homeless, with entire villages flattened across many districts of the country.
Samarpan Foundation’s Build Back Better programme will assist to rebuild Nepal for the long term, using ecological construction methods that have been certified to withstand up to 9.8 on the Richter scale.
The programme will provide long-term support and permanent climate-sensitive, earthquake- resistant homes for the people of Nepal.
The homes will be constructed using the Foundation’s PET bottle and Nylon-6 fishnet method that has been tested for certification by the Structural Engineering Research Centre, a constituent of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in India.
The structure, when tested within the laboratory, withstood 18 simulated earthquakes ranging from 1.56 to 9.8 on the Richter scale.
This method of construction is extremely low cost and an example of recycling PET bottles without a carbon footprint. Positive aspects of the building method include:

using discarded PET bottles filled with waste mud in place of regular bricks, making it an extremely efficient insulator, which is ideal for the low temperatures in Nepal. Since Nepal is a tourist destination, there is an abundance of discarded PET bottles.
using Nylon-6 fishnet in place of steel. The concept of binding the fishnet to the bottles makes for earthquake-resistant construction.

The project team will construct permanent buildings that are sensitive to climate and environmental conditions that maximise and best utilise materials found within the local area.
In rural areas where there may be few PET bottles due to poor tourist influx, Samarpan Foundation has developed a module that consists of clay bricks with fishnet. It bonds in the same way as the PET bottle and fishnet module.
In addition, a honeycombed wall structure can be used in which plastic garbage and/or construction rubble from devastated buildings can be recycled as wall fill.
The process of manually filling the bottles creates a zero-investment cottage industry and will provide employment for the Nepalese people participating in the programme. All donations will go to fund the purchase of construction materials and labour. Once built, the completed homes will be given to the Nepalese people.

Hundreds of thousands of homes have been destroyed. Click here to donate to the Build Back Better programme.