Thousands of Guatemalan families still live in temporary shelters nine months after Hurricane Stan hit this region. But thanks to an embryonic yet promising local project here, significant numbers of them may soon turn their rickety shelters into homes—with trash. Project Pura Vida has helped three families in this village on the shore of Lake Atitlán to replace the tarpaulin walls of their shelters with permanent walls whose key ingredient is half-liter plastic bottles stuffed with plastic bags. Authorities are studying the project for possible large-scale replication. The construction technique consists of stacking thousands of the bag-filled bottles between a shelter’s wooden supports, sealing them in place with chicken wire, then applying concrete to create what looks like a typical concrete... [Log in to read more]