Skip to main content
Sister Publication Links
  • Sustainable Plastics
  • Rubber News
Subscribe
  • Sign Up Free
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • News
    • Processor News
    • Suppliers
    • More News
    • Digital Edition
    • End Markets
    • Special Reports
    • Newsletters
    • Resin pricing news
    • Videos
    • Injection Molding
    • Blow Molding
    • Film & Sheet
    • Pipe/Profile/Tubing
    • Rotomolding
    • Thermoforming
    • Recycling
    • Machinery
    • Materials
    • Molds/Tooling
    • Product news
    • Design
    • K Show
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Sustainability
    • Public Policy
    • Material Insights Videos
    • Numbers that Matter
    • Automotive
    • Packaging
    • Medical
    • Consumer Products
    • Construction
    • Processor of the Year
    • Best Places to Work
    • Women Breaking the Mold
    • Rising Stars
    • Diversity
    • Most Interesting Social Media Accounts in Plastics
  • Opinion
    • The Plastics Blog
    • Kickstart
    • One Good Resin
    • Pellets and Politics
    • All Things Data
    • Viewpoint
    • From Pillar to Post
    • Perspective
    • Mailbag
    • Fake Plastic Trees
  • Shop Floor
    • Blending
    • Compounding
    • Drying
    • Injection Molding
    • Purging
    • Robotics
    • Size Reduction
    • Structural Foam
    • Tooling
    • Training
  • Events
    • K Show Livestream
    • Plastics News Events
    • Industry Events
    • Injection Molding & Design Expo
    • Livestreams/Webinars
    • Editorial Livestreams
    • Ask the Expert
    • Plastics News Events Library
    • Processor of the Year submissions
    • Plastics News Executive Forum
    • Injection Molding & Design Expo
    • Plastics News Caps & Closures
    • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum
    • Plastics in Automotive
    • PN Live: Mergers and Acquisitions
    • Polymer Points Live
    • Numbers that Matter Live
    • Plastics in Politics Live
    • Sustainable Plastics Live
    • Plastics Caps & Closures Library
    • Plastics in Healthcare Library
    • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum Library
  • Rankings & Data
    • Injection Molders
    • Blow Molders
    • Film Sheet
    • Thermoformers
    • Pipe Profile Tubing
    • Rotomolders
    • Mold/Toolmakers
    • LSR Processors
    • Recyclers
    • Compounders - List
    • Association - List
    • Plastic Lumber - List
    • All
  • Directory
  • Resin Prices
    • Commodity TPs
    • High Temp TPs
    • ETPs
    • Thermosets
    • Recycled Plastics
    • Historic Commodity Thermoplastics
    • Historic High Temp Thermoplastics
    • Historic Engineering Thermoplastics
    • Historic Thermosets
    • Historic Recycled Plastics
  • Custom
    • Sponsored Content
    • LS Mtron Sponsored Content
    • Conair Sponsored Content
    • KraussMaffei Sponsored Content
    • ENGEL Sponsored Content
    • White Papers
    • Classifieds
    • Place an Ad
    • Sign up for Early Classified
MENU
Breadcrumb
  1. Home
  2. News
May 13, 2015 02:00 AM

Agua Costa Rica turns water bottles into roof tiles

Jim Johnson
Staff Writer
  • Tweet
  • Share
  • Share
  • Email
  • More
    Reprints Print
    Jim Johnson
    Donald Thompson's Agua Costa Rica turns water bottles into sustainable roof tiles.

    When Donald Thomson holds a bottle of Agua Costa Rica in his hands, he sees much more than a bottle of water.

    The home builder, music school founder and businessman sees the potential to take what some consider to be an environmental liability — the plastic bottle — and turn it into an asset that can change quality of life for people down the street and around the world.

    Thomson, president of a company called Center for Regenerative Design & Collaboration, is rolling out a roof building system that relies on recycled Agua Costa Rica brand water bottles he developed.

    That's right. His is a years-long dream to develop a way to use recycled, specially designed water bottles instead of traditional roofing materials.

    And it all stems from his time helping clean the beaches near his Costa Rica home from all the plastic waste that washes ashore.

    “I started out as a developer in Costa Rica about 25 years ago with a real keen focus on social housing. I worked all over Latin America in that field.

    “And one of the things that I learned when I was doing that, was the most important way that you can break the cycle of poverty of people is to provide them with a house that had appreciating value,” Thomson said. “At the end of the day, that's it.

    “I was a developer in the highest end, very fussy about my building products and designs ... but with a real keen interest in taking those qualities to the lowest ends,” he said.

    Building construction gave Thomson and his wife enough money to buy a couple of beachfront bars, which they decided to turn into a classical music school for impoverished children in the small village of Pochote on the country's Pacific coast. Creation of the Harmony Music School attracted volunteers around the world who traveled to Costa Rica to help teach music to the children.

    “Then we realized one of the biggest problems in our area was the beach had just become littered and littered and littered with plastic. I thought we've got all these volunteers here, so why don't we start a beach cleanup program,” he said.

    That program eventually morphed to include efforts to plant mangrove seeds along the coastline. This regenerative design approach — planting new mangroves while picking up old plastic waste — helped inspire the idea of reusing plastic bottles.

    But how?

    “What we did is say, ‘Well, there's so much plastic coming up on the beach, if you can't beat them, join them. Right? And what can we do with this from a high-quality building standpoint,'” he said.

    Jim Johnson

    Agua Costa Rica's specially-designed bottle.

    Inspiration hit Thomson in 2011 while on a beach cleanup with two children.

    “I looked back, maybe it was the way the sun was, but that was my epiphany,” he remembered.

    He saw that the children had lined up a row of collected bottled so they could stomp them down to fit more into their bags.

    “I went, ‘Wow, there it is.' I don't know anything about the plastic industry, I don't know anything about it at all, but I knew that if I could turn that plastic into a tile,” he said.

    By the following year, 2012, Thomson had patented the concept and decided to devote his life to creating a sustainable roofing product from plastic bottles.

    Fast forward to 2015. The bottle designs are done, the product has just launched and Thomson has high hopes for the future.

    Priced slightly higher than other bottled water by PepsiCo and Coca-Cola Co. in Costa Rica, Agua Costa Rica water sells for the equivalent of about $1.25 to $1.30 in U.S. dollars, 725 colones in Costa Rica.

    A slight premium, based on market studies, but not so much that it won't gain broad appeal. The rectangular bottles are shipped 14 to a recycled PET tote that stores can give out to their customers. The totes, Thomson pointed out, are actually less expensive than cardboard boxes and provide another important reuse aspect to the project.

    Plenty of thought went into designing and engineering just the right bottle that could then be used as a building product.

    “We had to go about creating two rock star products with one design. We think that's our white space. That hasn't been done before. We call that ‘waste discount design.' That's really cool. Why we call it waste discount design is that I get my waste stream back for almost for free. So now I've got a discount on my supply stream for my next industry,” he said, which is building roofs.

    Empty bottles are compacted slightly with a special device to create a shape that can then be filled with a mixture of recycled paper, foam and cement to provide stability and strength. Those bottles are mounted on rails and weaved together with string to provide hurricane-force roof protection.

    The design is such that a panel of these bottles-turned-roofing tiles can be attached directly to rafters, eliminating the need for a roofing substrate at the right pitch.

    CRDC hopes to recapture 40 percent of the water bottles sold through Agua Costa Rica.

    “I get my raw material back for almost zero cost. That's a really great business model. That's a whole new deal,” he said.

    Thomson hopes this new approach will allow Agua Costa Rica to have success in an already-crowded bottled water market.

    “You need to have a really cool bottle and something that attracts people's attention. The bottled water industry is really competitive. So if you don't have a cool story, you're not going to break into the market. A lot of people thought our story was pretty cool,” he said.

    Thomson figures a small house needs about 5,000 bottles to construct a roof and an average home in Costa Rica will need about 8,000 bottles.

    Mike Urquhart, who made a name for himself in the bottle industry through a decades-long career at Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd., is a company director and likes what he sees.

    Urquhart, now retired from Husky, and Thomson met a few years ago through a mutual friend, and he's now using his plastic industry knowhow to help guide and promote CRDC.

    “You can run recycled content in this [bottle] originally and then reuse it for 50 years, which is just unheard of in the business,” Urquhart said. “This was a nice model and a nice bottle that has a unique shape and a unique feel to it and you get to reuse the cap as well.

    “I love the way you do the shipping of them to the store, even it's more ecofriendly,” he told Thomson.

    Urquhart said Agua Costa Rica has “the lowest carbon footprint of any water system that I've ever seen and I've been involved in just about all of them,” Urquhart said.

    Using recycled paper to help fill the bottle roofing tiles also allows the container to serve as a carbon sink because the paper will not decompose, Thomson said.

    “A big part of what we're trying to do is not only be zero waste, but it's also really, really lower that carbon footprint down to where we can justify using that plastic bottle. And maybe even in the best case ... make a carbon neutral bottle,” Thomson said.

    “And then when a product like this ends up on somebody's roof is just phenomenal. There's been nothing like this in our industry,” Urquhart said.

    Urquhart said he is very particular about what he gets involved with these days after retiring. “Husky was very good to me. I don't need to work, so I just work on things that are interesting,” he said.

    “In coming from the house builders' side, he saw things that nobody in the plastics industry would have seen and made a product out of it,” Urquhart said.

    “Mike is well known in the industry and we're newbies to the industry,” Thomson said. “We're construction guys. You need that kind of expertise. We're trying to do a world-class product. We can handle the world class on the housing side, and Mike can certainly bring the world class on the plastics industry side.”

    “And, we think, we can achieve these pretty lofty goals. We're both at an age where I don't want to get involved in anything that's not going to make a big difference.”

    RECOMMENDED FOR YOU
    Obituary: Inventor, Neutrex founder Arthur Haag
    Letter
    to the
    Editor

    Do you have an opinion about this story? Do you have some thoughts you'd like to share with our readers? Plastics News would love to hear from you. Email your letter to Editor at [email protected]

    Most Popular
    1
    Tornadoes, severe weather impact Texas resin plants
    2
    Eastman posts lower profit, plans job cuts
    3
    Plastics firms work to eliminate PFAS use as pressure mounts
    4
    OSHA: Worker died at plastics firm after duct tape covered safety guards
    5
    Georgia home to new PET chemical recycling plant
    SIGN UP FOR OUR FREE NEWSLETTERS
    EMAIL ADDRESS

    Please enter a valid email address.

    Please enter your email address.

    Please verify captcha.

    Please select at least one newsletter to subscribe.

    Get our newsletters

    Staying current is easy with Plastics News delivered straight to your inbox, free of charge.

    Subscribe today

    Subscribe to Plastics News

    Subscribe now
    Connect with Us
    • LinkedIn
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram

    Plastics News covers the business of the global plastics industry. We report news, gather data and deliver timely information that provides our readers with a competitive advantage.

    Contact Us

    1155 Gratiot Avenue
    Detroit MI 48207-2997

    Customer Service:
    877-320-1723

    Resources
    • About
    • Staff
    • Editorial Calendar
    • Media Kit
    • Data Store
    • Digital Edition
    • Custom Content
    • People
    • Contact
    • Careers
    • Sitemap
    Related Crain Publications
    • Sustainable Plastics
    • Rubber News
    • Tire Business
    • Urethanes Technology
    Legal
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Privacy Request
    Copyright © 1996-2023. Crain Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
    • News
      • Processor News
        • Injection Molding
        • Blow Molding
        • Film & Sheet
        • Pipe/Profile/Tubing
        • Rotomolding
        • Thermoforming
        • Recycling
      • Suppliers
        • Machinery
        • Materials
        • Molds/Tooling
        • Product news
        • Design
      • More News
        • K Show
        • Mergers & Acquisitions
        • Sustainability
        • Public Policy
        • Material Insights Videos
        • Numbers that Matter
      • Digital Edition
      • End Markets
        • Automotive
        • Packaging
        • Medical
        • Consumer Products
        • Construction
      • Special Reports
        • Processor of the Year
        • Best Places to Work
        • Women Breaking the Mold
        • Rising Stars
        • Diversity
        • Most Interesting Social Media Accounts in Plastics
      • Newsletters
      • Resin pricing news
      • Videos
    • Opinion
      • The Plastics Blog
      • Kickstart
      • One Good Resin
      • Pellets and Politics
      • All Things Data
      • Viewpoint
      • From Pillar to Post
      • Perspective
      • Mailbag
      • Fake Plastic Trees
    • Shop Floor
      • Blending
      • Compounding
      • Drying
      • Injection Molding
      • Purging
      • Robotics
      • Size Reduction
      • Structural Foam
      • Tooling
      • Training
    • Events
      • K Show Livestream
      • Plastics News Events
        • Plastics News Executive Forum
        • Injection Molding & Design Expo
        • Plastics News Caps & Closures
        • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum
        • Plastics in Automotive
      • Industry Events
      • Injection Molding & Design Expo
      • Livestreams/Webinars
        • PN Live: Mergers and Acquisitions
      • Editorial Livestreams
        • Polymer Points Live
        • Numbers that Matter Live
        • Plastics in Politics Live
        • Sustainable Plastics Live
      • Ask the Expert
      • Plastics News Events Library
        • Plastics Caps & Closures Library
        • Plastics in Healthcare Library
        • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum Library
      • Processor of the Year submissions
    • Rankings & Data
      • Injection Molders
      • Blow Molders
      • Film Sheet
      • Thermoformers
      • Pipe Profile Tubing
      • Rotomolders
      • Mold/Toolmakers
      • LSR Processors
      • Recyclers
      • Compounders - List
      • Association - List
      • Plastic Lumber - List
      • All
    • Directory
    • Resin Prices
      • Commodity TPs
        • Historic Commodity Thermoplastics
      • High Temp TPs
        • Historic High Temp Thermoplastics
      • ETPs
        • Historic Engineering Thermoplastics
      • Thermosets
        • Historic Thermosets
      • Recycled Plastics
        • Historic Recycled Plastics
    • Custom
      • Sponsored Content
      • LS Mtron Sponsored Content
      • Conair Sponsored Content
      • KraussMaffei Sponsored Content
      • ENGEL Sponsored Content
      • White Papers
      • Classifieds
        • Place an Ad
        • Sign up for Early Classified