Homes built with clay, grass, plastic and glass: How a Caribbean island is shying away from concrete
Photo Credit: Damar Ali. Retrieved from bbc.com On the island of Trinidad, houses are being built using upcycled materials to make them more climate resilient. When Erle Rahaman-Noronha decided to try his hand at farming in 1997, the land he settled on in Freeport, like much of Trinidad’s farmland, had been focused on monoculture – a remnant of the colonial plantations that scarred the region’s history. “There was just a citrus tree every 20ft (6m) – none of these big trees were here,” he says, gesturing around him. Now the 30 acres (12 hectares) more closely resembles a forest, dotted with structures built out of repurposed materials. Rahaman-Noronha hasn’t just reforested his land; he is passionate about ensuring the buildings on his farm are sustainable too. As you enter the farm a concrete house greets you – one of the older buildings on the land. But every other structure has touches of the earth. Clay, harvested from the land nearby; timber from the trees further back on the farm; repurposed glass bottles of all colours that glitter as the light hits them; rounded formations that only hint at the old, upcycled tires buried underneath to provide structure; and textured walls containing patchworks of dried grasses. The farmer is embracing the old Trinidadian ways of building, when residents would use what was available to them, rather than [mass importing materials](https://tradingeconomics.com/trinidad-and-tobago/imports-by-category). Not only is he putting waste products that would otherwise end up in landfill to use, Rahaman-Noronha is employing building styles that provide resilience against the island’s [changing climate](https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/trinidad-and-tobago#:~:text=As%20a%20Small%20Island%20Developing,and%20loss%20of%20coastal%20habitats.).
