A new pyramid has given the impression in the Egyptian desert. But from limestone blocks, the layout is made entirely with plastic waste.
The facility, designed through Australian startup Zero Co and goal-oriented wine logo The Hidden Sea, was built to raise awareness about plastic pollutants and the global advancement of the COP27 convention in Egypt this week.
“The pyramid took a total of five days to build and is made from about 45,000 pounds of plastic salvaged from the Nile,” Mike Smith, chief executive of Zero Co. , told Newsweek. “The collection procedure took almost a month. “
The cleanup of the river was carried out in partnership with VeryNile, a Cairo-based organization committed to removing tea from the waters and banks of the Nile. The resulting tea pyramid was built with the help of Egyptian artist Bahia Shehab, who uses creativity as a tool for social change.
“The pyramid is over 32 feet tall, the length of a three-story construction, and is the largest garbage structure of its kind ever built,” Smith said.
As part of the trick, Smith slept at the top of the pyramid for the three nights leading up to COP27.
“A garbage pyramid is precisely the ideal top position for ‘housing,'” he said. “The design sits under the warm Egyptian desert sun, so it smells bad and is covered in flies, because of all the garbage!
“The first night, I was a little worried that the pyramid would collapse. . . Sleeping to the max wasn’t the most fun and may never get indexed on a site like AirBnB. “
His short stay at the most sensitive point of the Garbage Pyramid had some highlights: “The view from the most sensitive point of the pyramid is certainly incredible, especially in the morning at dawn. The desert is certainly silent and the sunrises over the sand dunes are unbeatable. . “
The pyramid marks the start of an initiative, called 100yr Cleanup, to raise funds for large-scale cleanup projects over the next century. To date, more than $250,000 has been raised for the project.
“The reaction to the pyramid design has been incredible,” Smith said. “I think there’s a detail of astonishment because nothing like this has ever been done before. “
At the end of the conference, the team will deconstruct the waste pyramid and send all the recyclable plastic used in its structure to the recycling facility.
While the design is only temporary, Justin Moran, co-founder of The Hidden Sea, hopes the influence will be permanent. “If businesses and consumers help us, the collective influence could be epic with a true legacy. “” he told Newsweek. Egypt is lately globally hosting COP27. If we decrease even a fraction of the noise and set our eyes on the problem, we’ve done a really smart job. “
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