While trying to determine what could possibly be a useful and necessary (yet beautiful) thing from reflecting on Peru, I decided to brainstorm about rampant waste material there. In Peru, there is this thing called para llevar, which means in the most simplest of terms to-go. All food, regardless of whether it is spaghetti, tea, soup, chicken sandwiches, or even salads, is put into a little bag called bolsita. There are mountains of this plastic in the streets, dry riverbeds, and any where else there is a community repository (usually accidental). The other thing that I remember most about my trip to Peru was the bitter cold.
So, I began to research the possibility of using plastic polyethylene grocery bags for insulation in the home. The main idea behind insulation is to have a high R-value (high thermal resistance) of material at some sufficient thickness. I think air-pockets in things like foam etc reduce heat condctivity. Given that the bags were smashed together in a way that created air pockets, this may be a viable source of insulation materials. After trying to find the R-value of polyethylene (and in specific, a particular insulation capacity for a given density of plastic grocery bags). There were no reports except a proposal to conduct such an experiment. Interestingly enough, there was a similar test done for dryer lint (which was discovered to be R-15 as compared to the standard R-13 fiberglass batting).
Even if the R-value of a plastic grocery bag is high, there are also risks of flammability. I see this as a minor downfall, given the successful construction of many straw bale homes despite straw’s ease for bursting into uncontrollable flames. The idea is that the material at risk simply needs to be sealed with something - plaster in the case of the straw bale homes(.
Additionally, some sort of structure would have to be developed in order to create a sheet of these plastic bags. Either a repository of some sort that would act as an uninsulated wall or a manner in which an entire sheet could be processed with some bubbles would be nice.
Well, this design problem looks a little more complicated than I originally planned. To be thought on some more…..
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