To make a trash rock, a sack is first sewn out of fishnet. It is filled with trash and plastered with cement. The resulting shells are unique in shape and look very natural. Trash rocks are an esthetically pleasing and constructive way to eliminate trash.
Trash rocks can be used as benches, tables, sculpture bases, landscape accents, and walls. A family living in one location over time could build a castle out of their trash. I would expect trash rocks to have good thermal insulation, useful in both hot and cold climates.
I'm big into recycling and built my whole house out of recycled nylon fishnet and cement, a material I call nylon-cement. For many years I eliminated all my trash right at home using trash rocks.
Ideally, I would like to see a chemist develop a way to recycle some of our plastic trash and make a mesh material like fishnet out of it that could be plastered with cement.
Recycling is all about mining trash; converting waste into something useful. If we separate our trash first and put it into separate trash rocks we would know where to look for specific recyclable materials in the future when we need them. In the meantime, why not enjoy living around all the trash we generate?
Trash rocks can be used as benches, tables, sculpture bases, landscape accents, and walls. A family living in one location over time could build a castle out of their trash. I would expect trash rocks to have good thermal insulation, useful in both hot and cold climates.
I'm big into recycling and built my whole house out of recycled nylon fishnet and cement, a material I call nylon-cement. For many years I eliminated all my trash right at home using trash rocks.
Ideally, I would like to see a chemist develop a way to recycle some of our plastic trash and make a mesh material like fishnet out of it that could be plastered with cement.
Recycling is all about mining trash; converting waste into something useful. If we separate our trash first and put it into separate trash rocks we would know where to look for specific recyclable materials in the future when we need them. In the meantime, why not enjoy living around all the trash we generate?
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Many years ago I bought new fishnet by mail from a fishnet manufacturer. That seemed fairly expensive at the time; $6 a pound, I believe. I wouldn't be surprised if it is double that now, or more.
Then I found the free fishnet mother load of all time right under my nose, the StarKist tuna factory. They were very helpful to me in saving used fishnet that the boats wanted to get rid of. Discarded netting is a trash disposal problem for the factory, so we helped each other out.
After getting it home, the fishnet was opened out, cleaned off, rolled up and stored outdoors. It smelled "fishy". Given a month or two of exposure to rain and air it was completely user-friendly. Fortunately, I live in the country, where I can do this without offending the noses of neighbors.
Good luck finding a source of your own. Fishing ports and fish farms are good places to start looking for used fishnet. Ready-made trash sacks that can be plastered with cement should be available for this idea to really take off. Sewing your own sacks allows you to make different sizes of trash rocks, but ready-made sacks would save some time and effort.
http://agriculture.exportersindia.com/aquaculture/fishing-nets.htm This is a link to manufacturers of fishnet. Most are in the Orient.
http://www.thomasnet.com/nsearch.html?cov=NA&what=Netting&heading=53680203&navsec=prodsearch A search for "netting" on Thomasnet can come up with U.S. manufacturers.
Then I found the free fishnet mother load of all time right under my nose, the StarKist tuna factory. They were very helpful to me in saving used fishnet that the boats wanted to get rid of. Discarded netting is a trash disposal problem for the factory, so we helped each other out.
After getting it home, the fishnet was opened out, cleaned off, rolled up and stored outdoors. It smelled "fishy". Given a month or two of exposure to rain and air it was completely user-friendly. Fortunately, I live in the country, where I can do this without offending the noses of neighbors.
Good luck finding a source of your own. Fishing ports and fish farms are good places to start looking for used fishnet. Ready-made trash sacks that can be plastered with cement should be available for this idea to really take off. Sewing your own sacks allows you to make different sizes of trash rocks, but ready-made sacks would save some time and effort.
http://agriculture.exportersindia.com/aquaculture/fishing-nets.htm This is a link to manufacturers of fishnet. Most are in the Orient.
http://www.thomasnet.com/nsearch.html?cov=NA&what=Netting&heading=53680203&navsec=prodsearch A search for "netting" on Thomasnet can come up with U.S. manufacturers.
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Here is an idea that I never tried out:
Shape a boat hull upside-down out of sand, like a sand castle. Sift (flour sifter) dry cement over it and trowel it down while still dry. It then soaks up water from the sand and hardens, making a thin shell of cement on the mold.
Plaster that with nylon-cement and let it harden. Tunnel under the edge and remove the sand. Carefully turn it over, without breaking it, (how, I don't know) and line the inside with aluminum cans, pop top openings taped shut, holes against the hull, cemented in place. That might make a cellular flotation layer. Use light-weight cement, possibly with ground up styrofoam filler, instead of sand, to connect the cans.
If you put cans side by side on the floor, you can actually stand on them without crushing them, so this might strengthen the outer shell considerably.
Experiment small-scale and work up.
Thinking of the Pacific garbage patch, it would be nice if there was some sort of floating recycling plant that could turn the trash into plasterable mesh trash bags and plastic boats to float float it back to civilization.
Some chemistry student could do big help in the plastic trash problem if he could figure out how to convert plastic trash into mesh material that could be plastered.
terrific "ible" I have been pondering making some lightweight boulders but could not settle on the "filler" - trash bottles, etc are a great idea. I am thinking that in lieu of fishnet, you might use the plastic fencing/trellising that comes in various sizes - or plastic screening??
Ideal would be for somebody to figure out a way to recycle some of our trash plastic into a plasterable mesh material.
Used fishnet is a great recycling score, but it's not easy for most people to find. Ideal would be trash sacks all ready for plastering and converting into trash rocks.
2 cover the rocks where they are not going to get stepped or set on with hypertufa-moss mix (martha stewert recipe).
3 set flower pots into the rock, or make depressions, for flowers or ground cover.
4 grottos, hobbit homes, walls made of separate blocks leap to mind.
5 take a drive into the country with friend and gather your building materials by cleaning the roadside.
6 now i know how to make the easter island heads for my front yard!
If you can get the fishnet for the trash rocks, you can do the job with less material just by plastering the earth with a single layer of nylon-cement.
Lean the wall slightly back, so that back pressure from water won't push it outward. If there is too much back-pressure the nylon-cement will usually crack and leak, thereby relieving the pressure.
I have a couple of questions, though. First, how thick is the cement plaster by the time you're through? Second, have any broken and revealed their hidden contents? Third, how strong are these?
A few more...
What kind of trash do you usually include?
What is styrofoam concrete?
Have you considered crushing glass to use as a concrete ingredient?
Finally, this is a little off subject, but I would like your feedback on it. A couple of years ago, I had some old latex paint and an idea. I mixed the paint with sand. It had the texture of cement and when it dried, it was hard similar to cement, but pigmented with the color of the paint. Have you had any experience with this?
Thanks!
The strength depends a lot on the shape. A domed rock might support more weight than a flat top rock would, if one was standing in the center. If they don't support climbing on, I generally beef them up until they do.
The trash I usually include: I burn trash paper. I don't get newspapers, so the volume is not a lot. I compost organic scraps. The city collects empty plastic bottles, but there is a lot of plastic trash nobody wants around here, so that goes into the rocks.
Aluminum gets recycled. Iron scraps get warehoused as much as possible, for possible future projects, but the less useful stuff sometimes finds its way into a trash rock.
Styrofoam concrete is like regular concrete except that rock, and sometimes sand are substituted by different size pieces of Styrofoam. It is less strong than regular concrete, but also a lot lighter. It is useful for many projects.
Although glass could be added to concrete, I hesitate to do that because it might break in the future and be dangerous to work with. I would rather store it inside trash rocks and mine it at a later date if some good use for it came along. Perhaps a solar furnace might melt it all down and turn it into glass construction blocks, or skylights.
Latex paint and cement has been tried, and the resulting material is hard. I don't have a lot of experience with it, but the sample piece I made was very strong. There are acrylic fortifiers for cement. Adding latex may give similar properties to the acrylic. I'm not familiar with latex and sand, except as a way to make a non-slip painted surface.
Do you have a website that shows other things you have done?
The decay of synthetic materials, basically plastics, is reduced by protection from sunlight.
Toxic chemical wastes need special disposal. Unfortunately, we don't have any municipal toxic waste disposal here where I live. When I do stick any toxic waste inside trash rocks, I try to package it in glass. Then I cross my fingers.
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Thinkenstein: Spotted this entry and I thought how the years pass! Nearly 6 years since I stumbled across your website on your place with this very feature as one of the projects you spoke of there and how you presented your progress into inspiring me to think along these lines also!
I was right tickled to see you on instructables - you do come up with some very practical ideas with whimsies!
SALUTE
Thanks for the inspiration!