Project Title: Bottle to Home
Selected for Scholarships 2011-12, Master of Design for Social Business, School of Design, IED Barcelona and Milano

Colombia is a country with a high number of poor people, who live in very bad conditions, without homes nor basic utilities such as water, light or social security.

Among them we find recyclers, who are very important for Colombian society, whose job is to collect garbage from streets, classify it and deliver it to specialized recycling centers.

This is where a few questions appear – if they are so important for our society, why are they at the bottom of the social pyramid? Why don’t they have a home with the basic utilities?

Based on the previous question I created my project called “How a bottle transforms to a home”.

With the help of a non-­?profit social organization, the objective of the project is to train recyclers in reusing the objects that they find and create their own businesses.

The example given is to teach them how to transform bottles into nice and modern lamps which they will then sell to an emergent design store, which will then sell them to

consumers.

Bottles are an example of a raw material that may be used to create new products, but the general idea is to teach them different techniques using various elements such as carboard, cans, light bulbs among others.

Taking into account that the recyclers have no studies or just some few years of basic school, the projects should be simple but enriched with design and their personal life story. The proceeds of this project would be managed by the non-­?profit social organization and used strictly to any home and utility needs such as a house, water, light and social security for the recyclers involved in the project.

If all of these needs have been satisfied, then the earnings should be used for the education of the recycler’s children.