If one travels to the Brazilian island of Itamaracá, they may stumble upon an unusual home that boasts a feat of sustainability.
As its mother-daughter builders call it, the Salt House was derived from 8,000 abandoned glass bottles. However, where some saw the items as trash, the family saw a vision that became a seven-room abode.
de Vidro (@casadesal.eco)Edna and Maria Gabrielly Dantas knew Itamaracá had struggled with the environmental effects of tourism. While many flock to the area for its memorable beaches and impressive biodiversity, what they leave behind does not reflect this appreciation. The peak tourist seasons left hordes of waste in the Environmental Protection area, but the Dantas transformed the problem into a product of innovation.
“My childhood was marked by creativity. I made my own bamboo toys, and recycled whatever I could. We didn’t know it was environmental activism, it was just how we survived,” explained Edna, a socio-environmental educator, to Globo.
Edna’s upbringing in the water-stricken Brazilian region of Agreste led to her understanding of how to reuse items properly. Her daughter, a sustainable fashion designer, collaborated with her to develop The Salt House, which recycles waste for shelter.
Edna proposed the idea during the pandemic after noticing the glass bottles along the coast. It took them two years to use recycled wood alongside the bottles to build the foundation for the home. However, they also inserted anything they could reuse. From toothpaste tubes and pallets, the women ensured sustainable practices took priority in the home’s construction.
Their efforts also hold a deep connection to their Quilombola and indigenous backgrounds. This heritage stems from the descendants of enslaved Africans and Native Americans, both of whom emphasize a respect for the spirituality of nature. As Brazil remains under threat from climate change and environmental decline due to tourism, creating a use for these bottles aims to provide one solution to the problem.
“These bottles aren’t going to disappear. Without policies to regulate their production or penalize abandonment, the least we can do is find ways to reuse them. If you throw a bottle away and it doesn’t break, it’ll still be there in a year,” expressed Edna.
The women also faced gender discrimination, given their entry into the male-dominated field of home construction. While this pushback did not thwart their efforts, Gabrielly felt that other professionals underestimated the women throughout the project.
“We wanted to hire labor only for specific tasks, but they always wanted to give opinions, correct us, tell us how to do things — as if we lacked capability,” shared the designer. “People think that one day we found a magic bottle with a genie inside. They don’t realize this requires skill, management, vision. And being a woman in this environment is doubly hard.”
Despite the concerns, the Salt House symbolizes a new pathway to combat tourist-induced environmental damage. While it cannot utilize every bottle washed ashore, it showcases the ingenuity of local visionaries in maintaining and preserving their homelands.
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