The province of West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) has a school building with the main construction of the world’s first plastic bricks. This Sekolah Dasar Negeri 4 (Elementary School) was built in Medas Bentaur Hamlet, Taman Sari Village, Gunungsari District, West Lombok.
The SDN 4 Medas Bentaur building is one of the schools damaged by the 2018 earthquake. They have now rebuilt using bricks from recycled plastic waste (Eco Block).
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The Deputy Governor of NTB, Sitti Rohmi Djalilah, appreciated the construction of the school using bricks from recycled plastic waste. According to Rohmi, this could be a solution for the utilization of plastic waste in NTB.
In addition to being environmentally friendly, eco bricks are also claimed to be earthquake resistant.
“Alhamdulillah, we can use waste and become a resource for all of us, the use of ecobricks is very light, cheap, safe during an earthquake and very quickly made,” said Rohmi, quoted in a release, Tuesday (15/6/2021).
The progress doesn’t take long.
Rohmi said that building a school building using eco brick bricks did not take long. “This school alone assembling blocks like Lego only takes 5 hours, the maximum takes 1 week and 10 days,” said Rohmi while reviewing SDN 04 Medas Bentaur. Another advantage of using eco brick is that it is lighter, affordable, safe and time-efficient.
The raw materials for eco brick bricks for constructing the SDN 04 Madas school are still imported directly from Finland. The NTB Provincial Government collaborates with Block Solutions (Finland) and plans to build the first eco brick brick factory in Asia. “God willing, our plan in the future will be to build a factory to produce plastic blocks, to accommodate the management of plastic waste in NTB,” said Rohmi.