Manufacturing sustainable composite building materials: from waste, to the lab, to the community

This paper describes how our team took waste plastic and coconut fibers to create a composite strong enough to be used for roof sheathing in West Africa. Part one details the necessary background and literature review, our research design, and findings from lab work conducted in the summer of 2023. In part two of the paper, we describe a pilot test of reproducing our results outside the lab in a rural Ghanaian community. Through a co-design process, the team worked in a peer-to-peer relationship with community members of Akyem Dwenase in Ghana’s Eastern Region to test the process of transforming waste plastic into roof sheathing using technology designed in Ghana. The project was borne out of a MS project in Science and Technology for Innovation in Global Development and supported by a team of undergraduates who, under the supervision of faculty, worked for seven weeks in Ghana to develop and test the prototype. The paper concludes with areas for future work.