Have you ever noticed plastic waste everywhere in your community? Dr. Aboubacar Kampo has. He was living in Côte d'Ivoire, a country on the coast of West Africa, where plastic is a big environmental problem, compared with water and air pollution. Côte d'Ivoire's biggest city, Abidjan, produces more than 300 tons of plastic rubbish a day, and only about 5% is recycled. "How can we turn plastic into something useful?" Kampo wondered.
So Kampo, who works for UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, googled, researched, and then noticed a company in Colombia, a country in South America. Plastic pollution is a problem there, too. Conceptos Plásticos, the Colombian company that Kampo read about online, recycles plastic waste and turns it into big, Lego-like bricks（砖）for building schools and houses.
Next, Kampo went to Colombia to learn about the company in person. He toured schools that were built with its bricks and the factory where the bricks were made. "Conceptos Plásticos gave us a solution." Kampo said. He thought it could help with more than just the plastic problem. It could also improve children's education.
According to UNICEF, 1.6 million children in Côte d'Ivoire don't go to school. One reason is that there aren't enough classrooms. For kids who do go to school, classrooms are often very crowded. Kids often sit on the floor and can't stand up because there isn't room to move around.
In 2018
UNICEF built its first classrooms in Abidjan, using bricks produced in Colombia by Conceptos Plásticos. Right away, the local education improved a lot. People couldn't believe it at the beginning, that the classrooms were made of plastic. But now all the parents want their children in these classrooms. By the end of 2021 UNICEF had built 528 classrooms in Côte d'Ivoire. The new Conceptos Plásticos factory in Abidjan will soon be producing bricks from rubbish collected in children's playgrounds and on the beach.
The environmental influence is huge. Kampo says it takes about five and a half tons of plastic and just a few weeks to build a classroom. Unlike traditional building, no cement（水泥）is needed. "It's just a hammer（锤子）and those bricks." he added.
