Lately, every time I open up TikTok and scroll through my For You Page, I've been seeing videos of people cutting up plastic and stuffing it into water bottles to make something called an eco brick. And it looks like I'm not the only one — videos in the eco brick hashtag have been viewed 18 million times.
As an animal lover and someone who had a childhood crush on a Captain Planet character, I try to make more sustainable choices when I can. So I decided to give the eco brick trend a try and saved most* of my soft plastics, like food wrappers, bags, and packaging, for a week.
While I worked on saving up my plastics, I reached out to Lacey, aka @learnwithlaceyyy, to get some pro-tips on starting my eco brick. She's an environmental educator I found on TikTok who's trained in making eco bricks and has sharedseveralvideos around the topic.
She says that when you're getting started, it's best to choose a 16-ounce water bottle as your container and make sure you pack the base nice and tight. I was relieved that she suggested a smaller size, because I've seen many TikTokers filling up big 2-liter bottles, and that seemed overwhelming to me from the get-go.
"It's also really important to cut your plastics into small pieces," she says. "They're much easier to compact this way. It's really tempting to just continue to add, add, add, but in reality that can do more harm than good. I see videos all the time where people have kept adding more plastic and have not focused on the structure."
Finally, I hit the one-week mark, cleared off my table, and dumped out my plastic collection. Seeing all my plastic trash in one place like that was definitely powerful. When you're just throwing it away piece by piece throughout the week, you don't think much about it. But when you see it all together, it just seems like so much waste.
I had wanted to start by cutting up all my plastic, but using the scissors really hurt my hands after a bit, so I switched to packing in the foundation of my brick.
The soft plastics are so light and airy that they kinda resist being smashed together, especially on the top layer. Every time I push down, the plastic pops back up annoyingly when I release. It also didn't help that at first I was cutting the plastic a little bit too big. I started out making it into little strips, but I realized as I went that smaller bits, more like large confetti pieces, are easier to pack in and get airtight.
Ultimately, I spent my whole lunch hour cutting and packing, and I didn't get anywhere near all of my plastic from the week into the bottle.
I want to at least finish this brick, so I plan to keep going. But I have to say, I can't see myself doing this long-term. There are just so many other important chores that I'm already not doing. I don't have it in me to add another time-consuming task into the mix.
Lacey agrees that eco bricks are kinda misunderstood, but says they can be a great teaching tool. "It's not a practice that's going to solve the plastic pollution problem or climate change. In reality, it's a mitigation strategy to keep plastic waste out of the landfills. On the pro side, eco bricks can reduce plastic waste that's going to landfills; they can be used as building material, can address plastic waste production at the individual level, and can teach individuals about their own plastic consumption."
Finally, she says, "We only have one planet, and it's our job to make it last as long as we can. Humans have done a lot to Mother Earth, so it's only right that we try our best to make sure she lasts as long as possible. Making eco bricks isn't something I would expect everyone to be able to do, and to be completely honest, it isn't something that even I actively do all of the time."
Have you noticed any other sustainability trends that I should try? Tell me about them in the comments!
