Roots Collective NZ

About two weeks ago, we met up with Waikare, one of the founding directors from The Roots Creative Entrepreneurs. The Roots are a group of people who's aim is to empower young people by developing opportunities to showcase creativity, innovation, and design by inspiring the next generation about environmental awareness and sustainability. Waikare came in and talked about his journey with The Roots, and how he has been empowering young peoples lives. He talked about a few of the projects he has done, and he was basically here to share his knowledge and give us an insight of the plastic bottle green house. He has done many projects involving plastic bottles, from lights to sculptures and even green houses that he has made in some primary schools. Waikare helped open our minds into the possibilities of this green house we are planning to build. We discussed the size of the green house, possible building techniques and how many bottles we need. It took 1,500 bottles for Waikare to build a 1M X 2M green house, and it is estimated that we need around 25,000 plastic bottles to construct our 5M X 5M green house. Besides that, we suggested a few building techniques we could use. The first method was a stacking method that he used in building his green house. This method involves cutting the bottoms of the bottles, stacking it and putting a stick through it.

One of The Roots' project involving a green house made of plastic bottles.

The second method we discussed was mulching the bottles. This involves shredding the bottles, and then compressing the shredded pieces into building bricks. These bricks would then be used to construct our green house structure. The third method we discussed was melting the bottles and forming them into bricks. This really helped us identify which would be the most effective and stable structure. Waikare also talked about how he used different materials to make useful everyday products. For example, Waikare used the ends of the bottles that he had cut off from his green house project to make lights. He also used old tyres and some rope to create cheap and effective seats.


Waikare and The Roots Creative Entrepreneurs was of great help to us. We look forward to meeting up with them again in the near future.