Anh Ho, a senior at Oakwood Friends School from Vietnam, recently shared her multi-year campus sustainability project with neighboring Poughkeepsie Day School (PDS).  As part of her participation in Oakwood’s Libby Moroff Leadership Program, Anh taught the PDS 4th and 5th graders how to make Ecobricks. Her goal is to spread knowledge about reducing plastic waste and creating sustainable building materials throughout the Hudson Valley before she graduates in June.

Ecobricks are plastic bottles packed to a set density with used, clean and dry plastic to achieve a building block that can be used over and over again to make modular furniture, garden spaces, walls and even full-scale buildings. This enables plastic to be kept out of the environment and the industrial recycling system.  Ecobricking is a low tech, virtually zero cost regenerative technology available to anyone, anywhere. The Global Ecobrick Alliance is a non-profit that supports the local and glocal Ecobrick movement through the maintenance and development of resources, innovations and technology. 

As a result of Anh’s work with the class, Dorothy Luongo’s 4^th and 5^th graders will be setting up an Ecobrick station in their lunchroom and  working with their fellow Lower School students on creating and building with Ecobricks.  Anh plans to work with other organizations and schools locally including the Boys and Girls Club of Poughkeepsie and Spackenkill and Arlington High Schools. To learn more or get your school or organization involved, contact Anh at aho@oakwoodfriends.org.

https://www.ecobricks.org/