用空瓶子DIY的天堂岛屿

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Castaways like Robinson Crusoe and even Tom Hanks didn’t intend on living on a deserted isle, but this next guy did. I mean when he couldn’t find an island to call his own, he created an unbelievable floating paradise out of this.

This man has given up his job, his family and all of his material possessions to run away and live on a secluded island paradise, a paradise made from plastic bottles.

It’s taken me two and a half years from the beginning, from the first bottle collection to get to this point now and I’m quite happy with the progress.

It was over two years ago Richie Sowa gave up his job as a carpenter and moved to Mexico in search of a simpler life. He made his way to the sandy shore of Cancun. He started collecting bottles for cash and that’s when he came up with an unbelievable idea, to build himself an island he can claim as his own.

The collecting of the bottles I started by hand first, just going round the, the local town picking them up.

Have a great day!

Cheers.

See ya.

Thanks.

This floating island is the links of a professional tennis court. Richie gathered thousands of bottles and started stuffing them in fishnets to create the foundation.  

Well, this is the zone - total of three years’ work. It took me the first six months to just to get a base, which was about, that’s  about 15 meters across and about 20 meters long. It took me about 4 months to get a base of around 7 or 8 meters that I started to put plants on.

Richie placed bamboo and plywood on top of the foundation of bottles, paddling back and forth over and over every day, scooping sand off the shore to build his own private beach. But the biggest challenge was trying to grow plants on the plastic bottle barge.

These are mangroves that were planted just a few months ago and they are growing really, really well. You can feel how...

These are mangroves that were planted like 4 or 5 months ago. They’ve got stems on them now, like trees, palm trees. This will be a lemon tree.

Today this real-life survivor is totally self-sufficient, growing bananas, coconuts, spinach, almonds and tomatoes on this island. He’s even built a solar cooker, collects rain to water the plants and even made a washing machine out of a plastic drum that rolls in the waves. This is one island cast-away who never needs to leave, but if the truth to be told, Richie is never alone on this island.

We have quite a few inhabitants on the island at the moment. It’s me, my cat Bonita, and my second cat Eezy, a little dog Rainbow, two chickens, Browny and Blacky and the duck, the heart of the island, Korasong.

This barbing island of bottles has proven to be quite seaworthy as well, surviving two hurricanes and several tropical storms. And now even the Mexican government wants to recognize the private paradise, declaring the island as Mexican soil for tourists to visit. But Richie has another idea for his paradise. Every day he adds bottles to make his island bigger. His goal is to one day float out to sea and eventually drift around the world on the island he built with his own two hands.

One day we’ll sail out on the ocean and become a small floating country.