The Earthbag Project: PSF’s builds a more sustainable Pisco

By: Tierra entre de los Ojos





PEDAL for Change has embarked upon a journey this year in order to help our classroom partners learn about sustainability across the globe, and particularly in South America. Our goal is not only to see and write about sustainability throughout our journey, but also to experience and help collaborate on sustainable projects as we travel, meet new people, and get involved with new communities. The job of our students, YOU, is to read our blogs, give us feedback, and come up with innovative ideas of your own. Most importantly though, your job is to get involved and realize you are as big of a part of this project as Kether, Rayna, and myself. Here is a project that you can all be a part of! The Earthbag Project at Pisco Sin Fronteras.




What are Earthbags?
Earthbags are bags filled with earth. Most commonly, recycled rice bags or woven polypropylene sacs are used and filled with soil, sand, gravel, or whatever earth material that surrounds a particular building site.





Why build with Earthbags?
Millions of victims of wars and natural disasters need low cost housing and temporary shelter. More durable than tarps and more comfortable than tents, earthbags work perfectly since even unskilled workers can build their own shelters - all without destroying local resources. The structures are strong, make protective barriers, and can be used for flood control. They are useful in housing projects for the same reasons that they make good barriers. Since the walls are so substantial, they resist all kinds of severe weather and also stand up to natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods.
Currently, the only building material that is proven to endure 7+ magnitude earthquakes are earthbags. This method is favorable not only because the earthbags can move with the ground and absorb tremor vibrations, but also because the materials are cheep and easy to use; thus, they can be erected simply and quickly with readily available resources for very little money. In Haiti’s recent earthquake, earthbag homes stood strong while the earth shuttered during their 7.0 magnitude quake.

Something really neat is that earthbag homes can be built in almost any style or shape of imaginable: domes, vaults, structures with vertical walls, curved ‘organic' designs, roundhouses. This makes earthbag construction ideal for a variety of projects, from family houses to community centers.


Most importantly, earthbags are sustainable! Using materials surrounding the construction site means using abundant resources in the nearby area. Because earthbags move in an earthquake, walls of an earthbag structure should stand through even the worst conditions. In addition, earthbag home construction has a very little environmental impact.

PSF and Sustainability:
At the moment, most homes and structures that PSF builds are made from recycled tarps and pallet wood, have concrete floors, and are topped with bamboo roofs. While these buildings provide a temporary solution to living on dirt floors with open sewage systems, these structures are not made to withstand another major earthquake.

In many ways PSF does build sustainably. They use recycled materials, which reduces what they consume and what others throw away. However, building structures that will eventually be destroyed will ultimately produce more waste and leave people homeless once more. Recently PSF has adopted the idea of earthbag construction and working on converting all their projects to this method. Building with earthbags is the first step in PSF’s goals to becoming more sustainable. In the future PSF would like to build all their structures with earthbags and go on to teach locals how to adopt this method for themselves. PSF will become more sustainable not just through their building methods, but also through education and getting more involved with the community.

PSF’s first Earthbag Project:Volunteers here in Pisco have already started the construction of PSF’s first earthbag project. The structure being built is a community center. This center will be used to host community meetings and give members a place to come and learn. In addition to English classes, cooking classes, and fundraisers that will be held in the center, the people of Pisco can learn how to build their own earthbag homes.


This is a project that has a lot of potential in the community of Pisco. Not only will it build a nice community center, but it can potentially save lives. If the community members see that building with earth bags is indeed effective, others will begin to build with this new technology, making safer homes that will have the structural integrity to remain standing.

These two pictures (above and below) show volunteers building the bathroom for the community center. The volunteers leading the project are currently in Lima collecting supplies and hope to return by Monday to continue construction. They predict it will take two months to complete once construction starts again.



How you can be a part of the Community:By Thanksgiving, PSF needs to raise 4,000 soles in order to complete this project. If you believe in this project and would like to support sustainability at PSF and in Pisco, please buy a PEDAL for Change T-shirt. 75% of the proceeds will go to both the community center project as well as future earthbag construction projects. In addition, anyone who buys a shirt will have their name written on the wall on the community center once it is complete. Through other volunteers’ pictures and the PSF website, we hope you will all keep in touch with what is happening with the project and the progress it is making.

If any of you have other ideas for fundraising and/or want to promote the earthbag project on your own, please do! Let us know your ideas and if there is anything we can do to help!

Also! check out the PSF website for more information: http://www.piscosinfronteras.org/

And the following video/slide show will give you a little look at the devistation from earthquake in Pisco, how people live here, and what PSF does to help. Some of our upcoming blogs will address the projects that deal with some of the things you will see in this video.