Eco friendly roof shades made from used bottles

Plastic bottles have become an indispensable part of our modern lifestyle. Be it on a long distance train journey or some business conference, they are used for drinking water and other liquids but thrown away after the use. Since most of these bottles are made up of non-recyclable plastic, they are becoming a great risk for environment as the number of used plastic bottles is increasing everyday and the environment experts are still searching ways to deal with this problem.

Plastic bottle roof shade

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Plastic bottle roof shade

Plastic bottle roof shade by Heath Nash

However, Heath Nash, a South African designer, has come up with a unique solution for re-using them as roof shades. The design was produced by Nash as part of the HIFA performing arts festival 2011 held in Harare, Zimbabwe. Though, originally he was invited to produce a public light installation, Nash felt it beneficial to produce a structure of shade for people, in accordance with the patterns of Harare's architecture. Made up of used plastic bottles of different size, shape and colors, these roof shades can address multipleproblems at the same time for other cities as well.

In most of the urban cities these days, common people find it difficult to find a shaded place to sit and relax, especially when the scorching Sun is overhead. The problem is only growing as the concrete jungles are increasing in the name of cities. However, these plastic bottle roof shades can not only provide a shaded place to people outside but can be used in houses as well.

Not only this, the consumption of plastic bottles has increased tremendously all over the world. According to an estimate, the per person consumption of bottled water more than doubled in the span of ten years between 1997 to 2007 in the U.S. alone. One can just imagine what would be the consumption data for 2011 in the U.S. and in rest of the world. It requires a lot of land to dispose the used bottles in landfills. Secondly, scientists have attributed several harms to the repeated use of the plastic bottles. It has been found that food and drinks in the plastic bottles can contain Bisphenol A (BPA) which can harm the hormonal messaging system of the users.

Under such conditions, the plastic bottle roof shades can be seen as a perfect example of the use of human creativity for meeting the eminent environmental problems we face today. Most of these problems have been caused by unbridled consumption of resources and we will have to come up with more unique ways to deal with them.

Via: Designboom