"We want to find sustainable housing alternatives for the poor, while also discovering new markets for their agricultural products. This is a perfect combination."
Elsa Zaldívar takes leftover pieces of a vegetable sponge and mixes them with other vegetable matter and recycled plastic to form strong, lightweight panels that can easily be assembled into simple structures, including houses. Her technological, eco-friendly solution to her nation’s housing shortage will help save what remains of Paraguay’s rapidly diminishing forests.
300,000
Paraguayan families without adequate housing
<US$3
cost per square metre to produce Elsa's panels, making it competitive with existing construction materials, such as wood
