Community Initiated Project

I am Manali, an Eco-Enthusiastic Dubai Mum of Two staying here since 2008. I started my Sustainability journey approximately 8 years ago when I founded an Eco-club called the Rugged Recyclists Club to involve my community to live more sustainably through Recycling of their Dry waste & Composting their Wet waste so we can save the landfills from getting saturated which leads to the release of harmful Greenhouse gases, one of the leading causes for Global warming & Climate change.

This lead me to create more awareness towards Reducing our Plastic waste specially during the Pandemic where more single-use plastic was being used as a precautionary measure & disposable masks were further polluting our water & land.

Sadly Single use plastic often than not recycled as it is Time consuming, Labor intensive & not profitable for recycling companies. But what can we do as individuals to make a difference because till the last Disposable Plastic water bottle is produced &  the last single use plastic food wrapping is not taken off the shelf we as consumers can definitely Reduce but cannot completely avoid our buying our day to day products in plastic.

So me along with my Friend Sumithra who is an architect decided to Launch the initiative of making Eco-bricks called The Ecobrick-X-Change Dubai. An Eco-Brick is made by using Pet bottles which can be stuffed with Soft Non-recyclable plastics like food wrappers, Styrofoam, straws & disposable masks etc.

Making Ecobricks not only helps avoid these Plastics to be incinerated or worse further break down into  micro-plastics which are creating havoc by entering our soil, water & ultimately our bodies. We are already consuming

‘1 Plastic Hanger worth of Microplastics in a month!’.

We were able to involve 25 participants to make Eco-bricks from different walks of life in Dubai, Age No Bar. Through more than a year of Online Eco-brick workshops keeping in mind social distancing norms,we have been able to collect 680 ecobricks!

And I am very happy to inform we have managed to make a Community Compost Pit with these ecobricks which will encourage more Citizens to compost their Wet waste responsibly & build soil in a desert instead to sending it to the landfill! Win-win wouldn’t you say?!.

We are open to taking on More such Eco-brick Projects in collaboration with Schools, Universities, Corporates & Communities to Guide, Hold Workshops & Build something Useful with Ecobricks to deal with this mountain of  Non-recyclable waste at a societal level to create awareness &

‘Brick-ing the Change together’