Mexico City — Three decades after conservative Mexican building regulations destroyed a private business group's hopes of providing rotationally molded temporary housing for the victims of natural disasters, one of the four backers of the original project is attempting to revive the plan.
Horacio Lobo y Zertuche, Mexico's leading rotomolder and the only Mexican specialist inducted into the Glen Ellyn, Ill.-based Association of Rotational Molders' hall of fame, told Plastics News Oct. 10 that he wants Mexico to be in the vanguard of efforts to rehouse those made homeless by earthquakes, floods, wars and similar catastrophes across the world.
He also sees it as a way of "dignifying plastics" in the face of incessant criticism by its detractors. Two earthquakes that struck central, southern and southeastern Mexico in September killed hundreds and destroyed thousands of homes, sparking Lobo's renewed interest in the plan.