He Built a School Out of Garbage — and It’s Changing Lives

Hello and welcome to the Conscious Design Podcast. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, and I help turn product ideas into sustainable businesses. Join me for another episode where sustainability meets innovation and business savvy. Today, I'm really excited to have Matt Pinitz. He's an ASAP Fellow and Executive Director at Long Way Home, where they are turning trash into schools. Welcome to the show.

Great to be here. Thanks for this opportunity.

Yeah, I am excited to dive into how you built schools from trash. Let's start a little bit towards the beginning. Everybody loves the origin story. So how, how did you get into this field? How did this start as a— and turn into turning trash into schools?

Right. Well, have you ever seen The Goonies where he's like, you know, starts in the 3rd grade? No, I'll go slightly beyond the 3rd grade. So I was in the Peace Corps. And so that was the first time that I was ever introduced to Guatemala. I don't think I'd ever even heard of Guatemala before the Peace Corps. And then, so I did my Peace Corps service in the town where we are operating the school that we built out of trash. So that's where I was introduced to the concept of building out of trash. We were running our NGO. We had built a city park. We started accepting trash bottle bricks instead of like a fee to get into the park. You know, the fee was like 25 cents, but there were local neighborhood kids that couldn't afford that 25 cents. So I was like, collect the trash on the streets, 'cause there's trash everywhere, put it in this plastic bottle, then we'll make a fence out of it, then you can get in for free. So, you know, 10,000 bottles later, I started talking to the co-founder of Long Way Home and said, hey, I'm thinking about building a school. And he goes, you ever heard of building out of trash? I was like, no, never heard of building out of trash. And then he busts out this book called Earthship Volume 1, and it's about how to build with tires. Now, both of us had some construction experience, which is kind of why we started the NGO together, and put the book on the ground, got some dirt, got a couple of tires, and got after it. Started practicing and we went well. People loved it. We enjoyed it. We somehow enjoyed, you know, using a sledgehammer for 8 or 9 hours to pack dirt into a tire, right? And then we decided to build an entire 20-building complex out of that trash.

Amazing. That is a lot of trash to turn into something useful. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, in Guatemala, there's not a system of waste management, right? And so, you know, while we're You know, wanting to build stoves, water tanks, and other basic infrastructure. We were, you know, didn't have much of a budget to work with. So we were like, can we take some of this trash, offset some of the materials costs that'll also allow us to clean up some of the streets and decontaminate the air, water, and soil? And so all of those things converged and we came up with an idea.

I love it. Now, when, when did you start I know you started NGO and then you started construction on this major kind of timeline-wise. Could you outline like, when did you start? And obviously you're up and running, like it's usable.

Yeah. So Peace Corps was 2002 and 2003. Then I moved back to the US, decided to try to live a normal life. And that didn't really work because I was still had this feeling that I wanted to go back, that I'd left it unfinished. Bought a 1988 Volkswagen Jetta with the windows didn't work, Kerouac style, and drove back. And then from 2005 to 2008, we built a city park, grass soccer field, the first grass soccer field in the history of that town. So then all these people from the town started coming to the city park and you started really getting to know everybody playing ball like 7 days a week. You want to integrate into a society, then, you know, playing soccer worked out pretty well because you make friends at all levels.

Right.

And then in 2008, we decided that we would try out the concept of building with trash. So we did a tire house and then we did a house out of super adobe or what other people call earthbags. And then in 2009, we bought 2 acres of land and January we were digging out the foundation for the first set of buildings.

Amazing. Long-term, right, have you built all the buildings that you want to, or do you see this as more like an ongoing project?

So we built, like about a week ago, we finished the last campus building, right? So it took us, you know, going on 17 years to build all of the buildings. That is not because we're like terribly slow builders. It was because there was a process involved of, first of all, we had to learn how to do it. We'd done some construction in our lives. We'd never built with tires. So, and there wasn't a lot of information out there on how to do this outside of the Earthship book. Right. And then we wanted to build with earthbags and then you have to get books about that. In addition, we were also training locals. Right. Because we were a couple of people from the United States living in Guatemala in the middle of nowhere and needed the support and the contribution and the collaboration of all the locals. But of course, none of the locals had ever built with trash. So we're taking, you know, people who had experience building with cinder blocks and going, hey, can you think outside of the box? We're all going to learn how to do this together. And so, you know, the basic principles still apply. You're still, you know, trying to plumb things and level things. But there's a lot of work to be done to figure out how it exactly all works together. Right. And so we were working it all together and getting to know everybody in the town and yeah, we are in it. So, but on the campus also, there is a bunch of different types of buildings. We've experimented with bamboo. We've experimented with Ubuntu blocks, eco bricks. We have domes, we have barrel vaults because the campus itself is a menu of options for infrastructure for the local community. If you walk into campus, what you will see is options, right? So you could build a house for a family that's a barrel vault sitting over tires. You could do one that's columns where in between the columns you have earth, you have Ubuntu blocks or adobe. We also, you would see compost latrines and stoves and retaining walls. So, you know, we were practicing while building the campus and building the classrooms. For what we would later be implementing in the game.

Right. I love that idea. That's something that I've— there's an interior design company that they built their offices in a way to kind of showcase and have their designers be able to play with a space because it's, I think that's one of those things you don't, you don't actually sit in it, especially if you're gonna build a home or something, you know, where you're gonna live or work, you should be able to experience it and see what might work the best for it. And it's hard to, it's hard to do that from a picture, right? So I love the idea of building this. It's a school, but it's also this way to go see a bunch of different construction methods that aren't, they aren't the typical brick and mortar or 2x4, right? They're not just the standard kind of construction options. So I love that idea of being able to actually see, touch, feel, check out What is it actually gonna look like when you're done?

Right, right. And because we turned it into a showroom, and it's not like a lot of people in Guatemala were building out of trash whenever we started, so people from all over the country and really all over the world have come to this campus. And what we've done at our campus has certainly influenced other practices at other campuses around the country because kids take, and schools take field days. To come to our campus, talk to our teachers, talk to our builders so that they can have some ideas on what they might implement at their schools as well. And because they're not looking at a picture, they're actually coming to physically see it and feel it. And then they'll usually be involved for a couple of hours or a couple of days or a couple of weeks. You know, they walk away with a much deeper understanding and the possibility of implementing it at their schools.

So you've obviously used a lot of different methods. You see, you have 20 buildings, right, on this, on this campus. What are, I guess, are there any that you started and then decided to reject because it just didn't work out? Or have you been able to find a way to make every one you've tested work?

Yeah. The first one we did out of tires did not work. Right. So if you can imagine, it takes a good 15, 20 minutes to pound one tire with dirt. The first building, one of the rooms would have, let's say, 250 tires, but we overpacked the tires. And so as it got 10, 11 courses tall, it started to get unstable, right? Because we had like kind of hockey pucked it rather than leaving a little bit of space within the tire so that it could comfortably sit on top of the one below it. So as we got pretty much all the way finished, we had to tear the entire thing down, which meant using picks to work the dirt out of the tire and then had to start over from scratch. Right. And another occasion, we built another building out of more like cob, right? Or adobe. And we went eco-brick and then adobe and then eco-brick and then adobe. And usually in Guatemala in February, it doesn't rain. Right. It never rains. And then as soon as it never rains, we didn't tarp the building. It rained one night and it was a 2-story building and the entire thing came crashing down in the middle of the night because the cob on the top turned into mud and the entire thing, you know, there were no students, there was no people. And, you know, we still hadn't really opened the campus yet. It was still all under construction. But yeah, that entire thing failed as well. And so we've had a lot of failure. In fact, we probably You know, probably 90% of what we did, we did wrong, right? Because we didn't really know what we were doing. But we learned from our mistakes and dusted ourselves off and got right back at it.

Yeah, there's nothing, nothing like having some good heavy rains to test your, test your structure with.

Well, as far as like replicability goes, we found that it's a lot easier for people to replicate tire buildings because there's more room for error, right? You can like, you know, with a tire that is, you know, a good 2-foot wide, you can move it in, move it out, you can plaster For whatever the difference is in the wall thickness. But whenever you're doing earthbags, it's more technical, right? And there's less room for error. So we've encouraged people to work more with tires than we have to say work with earthbags.

Right. Just don't pack it too much that way. So outside of the tire ones, what would be your second most popular that you've— people find that it's easy to work with?

The eco bricks, because basically you're taking cob and then a plastic bottle filled with trash, and then cob and then a plastic bottle filled with trash, and you're going up, and all you have to do is stay plumb. Now we prefer the methods that use the most trash. Earthbags don't use that much trash, right? And so, you know, a big important part of this is to clean the environment and figure out what to do with all the trash that we find on the ground. So the eco brick one is one of our favorites. Also the Ubuntu. Because what we do with an Ubuntu block is we basically, you know, build a column, build a column. An Ubuntu block is like all of the plastic or some of the random rubbish that we couldn't get into a bottle. We put it into a little compression machine that's manual. We compress it down, we get some baling wire, throw it around it, and it basically turns it into a cinder block. Right. And so it's like, that's another really good way to get rid of loose weird-shaped plastic that needs to go into a wall, but it doesn't really fit into anything else that we've done. So we're trying really hard, like I said, to get rid of as much rubbish as we possibly can and then plaster it up and then keep it out of the waste stream.

Right. And how— so you've been building these for a while. So durability, you're seeing these structures withstand monsoon seasons and heavy rains and things like that. Have you had What has your experience been like looking at buildings that are not brand new anymore? They've sat there and been used for a long time now.

Yeah. So whenever we were building the campus, we lived on the campus, right? So our approach was like build a classroom and then live in it and then build another one and then live in it, you know? And so that saved money. It kept us kind of in the belly of the beast all the time to see all what's going on. And I'm not sure if you're aware, Guatemala has a lot of earthquake activity. There's been a lot of ruptures of this volcano called Fuego that's even kind of famous because of how high it shoots lava into the air. And so we get, you know, in a month you'll get 10 tremors. And when you're living in the building and you get that level of tremor, instead of running out of the building, we're going to kind of ride it out because sometimes the tremors are so strong they'll wake you up. And so, you know, now we're into almost 2 decades of tremors and the buildings really haven't changed that much. You'll see the occasional crack in the plaster, right? But because of the way that the walls function, the rubber absorbs the movement of the tremor. And so the wall doesn't have a way to crack. It's not going anywhere. And because we'll backfill a lot. can't actually fall. And we use opposing forces when we're doing the barrel vault domes and then, uh, they're connected to the different wall structures that we have. So conceptually, the buildings have already fallen, right? And so with all of the natural activity in the area, the monsoons, the earthquakes, we're shocked even ourselves that the buildings have not changed hardly at all. They're still— in about the same condition as when we started.

Hey, it's your host Ian. I'm really glad you're enjoying this episode. I absolutely love highlighting amazing brands and founders for the awesome things they are doing. I've helped hundreds of entrepreneurs and businesses like yours turn their boldest ideas into powerful, purpose-driven brands. So if you're serious about building a brand people love like our guests and clients do, and one that you're proud to stand behind, I invite you to dive a bit deeper with our book Conscious Design. Inside, you'll discover the exact framework and steps we use to help entrepreneurs like you turn purpose into a powerful, impact-driven brand. A brand that stands out, attracts loyal customers, and drives sustainable growth with social and environmental responsibility woven into its DNA. Grab your copy today. You can find it on our website, consciousdesignhouse.com, or just find the link below in the show notes. Enjoy the rest of the episode, and don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. That's amazing because that's even, you know, that's something that modern builders deal with not so well sometimes, especially with that much. I mean, that's a lot. That's a lot of earthquakes to be dealing with along with heavy rains. It's a very strong, tough environment for rigid. What normally would be a very rigid structure. But like you said, I think that's absorbing those shocks is— that's great. Great you've been able to achieve that so well because that keeps all the trash out. Otherwise it defeats the point.

Well, and we did this because in 1976 there was an earthquake and that earthquake killed a lot of people. Right. And so people had built their homes out of adobe and then they put adobe tiles basically on the roof, and those tiles are really heavy. And then the earth shook, and then all those tiles fell inside of the house, and those roofs fell on top of people. So that's why we were trying to use tires so much, so we could come up with an alternative to that so that people could see how it's done. They could see that over 15 to 20 years, how it performed in the exact same environment. And potentially decide to use it themselves rather than risking what might happen if your walls are built out of adobe or even cinder block. Cinder block will crack, right?

Yeah. No, bricks are not good for earthquakes.

They're rigid.

So what have you done for knowing that the roof, the roof side is so key? What have you done for roofing to help make sure that that's not a concern anymore? Yeah.

So like with the roofs, We tried bamboo trusses, right? And the world knows that bamboo is strong and durable, and the bamboo trusses are in the same shape they were whenever we started. They perform really well in earthquakes.

Okay.

And we do a lot of rounds, round shapes, right? So arches and domes, because architecturally they say round is sounds. And so, yeah, our buildings, it's difficult for a barrel vault to fall in, right? Because it's already pressing out and the domes are already pressing out. So they both perform really well in those conditions.

That's awesome. So you've been able to, have you had to use any lumber then, or have you been able to use bam— like tree lumber, but have you been able to just replace that completely with bamboo and other Other materials then?

Yeah, it's not so easy to get lumber. We've used some because we will frame out some interior walls or, you know.

Okay.

But Guatemala is pretty deforested and lumber's really expensive. However, bamboo, you know, grows back quick and they have a lot along the coastal areas and it's not expensive. And if you treat it, then it lasts a really long time. So most places where we might have used wood, yeah, sure, we use a lot of bamboo. Wood is faster. So sometimes we're like, all right, we're going to make a doorframe. Let's make the doorframe out of wood because wood is much easier to work with than bamboo. But no, we haven't built any structures using wood.

That's awesome. I think that's super important, right? Thinking, thinking about what's actually there and what, what, I mean, it goes even back to, you know, the trash, right? Use what's— trying to figure out what you can use that's actually Locally there, and rather than importing from some other country, some expensive material to try to, try to build out of it. Sounds hard to do, especially if you're modeling it for people to be able to easily copy elsewhere in the country.

Yeah, we'd like to have zero impact on the environment, but that's not, it's not exactly a reasonable thing because we could build everything out of earthen materials that we find on site, conceivably. We could grow our own trees. We could plant straw. It would take us 75 years to do this if we did it that way, but it is possible to do so. Then we start having to make decisions, right? So we think about the emission effect on whenever we go get tires because we use a large flatbed truck that we drive along the Inter-American Highway, which is about 25 miles from our site. And we pick up tires at little mom-and-pop tire shops. Now, those mom-and-pop tire shops would otherwise be throwing their tires into a ravine, right? Or they'd be burning them, or they don't really have a good way to dispose of their rubbish or their trash. So we are not perfect in the sense that, you know, there are some emissions related. Plus, we use some cement, we use some conventional materials. Well, we're trying to use cement responsibly. Our barrel vaults are made out of cement or concrete. And so we try to use the least amount that we possibly can. However, we think that it's the best use of that material because if used properly, it can last a really long time. And then this is always what we're dealing with. What is the most reasonable roof to put on one of these buildings? Right. And so we're constantly talking about it, thinking about it, discussing it, getting advice and trying out the ideas.

I love it. Yeah. There's obviously, it would be great if there was magical material that you could just plop in the ground and in 3 days you had all the components to build out. That would be great. But it's just not, especially in— I love that you're using this as an example for like people come and see this. So this is also people that they're just going to build a house for themselves. They need something that they can actually do and not just this, yeah, it's perfect, but good luck doing it on your own. That no one's going to do that. They're like, that's cool. I saw it, but I'm not going to do it. So this, like you said, the practical kind of this practical side of, okay, you're going to have to make some decisions because you have to make it this doable, repeatable path that someone will actually go do, not— necessarily this perfect laboratory setting, basically, where you have everything. So it's a— there's those decisions to make and not— I think people, some people, a lot of people really kind of worry about like, oh, well, I have to make it perfectly sustainable, otherwise it's not doing— and it's, it's really hard to do that realistically. Yeah.

And, you know, we have some partners like One of 'em's called the Natural Building Collective, and they work out of South Africa, and they do their work with 95% natural materials. And so by partnering with them and collaborating with them, we do learn from what they do and use adobe bricks where we can to make an arch, use earthbag bricks where we can to make an arch rather than forming it out of concrete. There are places that we've learned how To spend a little bit more time, cuz that's what the difference is. Concrete dries fast, right? You can walk on a concrete floor the next day. Pretty much. You can use the door of an arch of a concrete doorway pretty much immediately. So, you know, it's a balancing act. How fast do we wanna spend 17 years or 34 years building a campus? Or do we wanna be able to use the doorway tomorrow so that we can access our tools quicker so that we can move along with the campus? We're constantly balancing best way to go about doing this.

Yeah. Looking forward, like built this campus, you just finished your last building. Is this, do you see doing this again? Is this something that you guys are thinking about building another campus? Kind of what's your, I guess what's next for you guys since you've built this one out?

So chapter 2, right? That was a really, really long chapter 1. And so the next chapter for us was, so like what we saw in Guatemala, what we thought, and we were quite wrong about, was that if we built all these structures, that the people around us would pick it up and that they would build it too. And that did not exactly happen. Right now, if you go around Guatemala, something you will see are a whole lot of tire retaining walls because tire retaining walls are way cheaper than rock and concrete. retaining walls and they last a lot longer. So they're super popular. So popular that at the beginning people weren't giving us tires, right? Now they're selling the tires to us. So we've kind of shot ourselves in the foot on like being able to get our materials.

You created a whole new market.

We created an entire market out of the tire thing. And so good and bad, but So like the next step for us was in order to make sure that, you know, we didn't do it and then it was kind of forgotten, we started integrating what we learned into the lesson plans because we have 178 students that go to our school that had been attending our school for pretty much the last decade. And so what we saw is school could be boring. We have all heard of this, that the teacher stands there and the students Received the information and we're like, well, we're not going to put all this effort into all these amazing buildings and then use a normal education model that kids are not totally engaged by. So we came up with an alternative model and that's where you get the name Hero School, right? So the same buildings and the same concepts that we use while building the campus, we integrated into like, let's say, math class. Now in math class, instead of doing something abstract, we use math to decide how to build a ventilated stove for a family, right? What are the dimensions? What's the design? In social studies class, you're supposed to do a survey based on the state-mandated curriculum, but now we do a survey and we go out into the community and find out which families, because there's a lot of poverty in the area, Which families are cooking over open flames indoors? Right. And then in art class, we model the project. So by integrating these concepts into the curriculum, the students are now going out into the community and building these projects. And now that we're, we're 7 or 8 years into really integrating these projects into the curriculum, our students have gotten really good at this. It's really amazing to see a group of 6th graders identify a family that needs a stove, walk into that family's house, get permission from the family to do it, go back to the classroom and decide how they're going to do it. And it's divided up between all of the major courses and then go out and actually build that stove or that water tank or retaining wall or dry compost latrine. Or a classroom. So the students are super engaged by this process. They're so excited to be doing something of real value for their community. It does wonders for their self-esteem. And then the next chapter, now that we've kind of integrated that chapter in, the next chapter is to provide the local public schools with our lesson plans, because we want all of the public schools in the whole area to all be doing the same poverty-fighting techniques, right? So if you were to, you know, right now we've got 15 kids in our 6th grade class, but there's another 250 6th graders in the town. We're going to hand them our lesson plans. The teachers are happy to receive the lesson plans. And so we're going to work with the other public schools and start fighting poverty on a massive scale.

I love that. All right. I think The practical side, right? That was always— anybody who was bored in school was usually because they're like, what do I do with this? What's the point of— what's the point of learning all this right now? So I love that you're integrating, integrating that. And it's, it works. It's amazing what happens when you actually engage kids and you're trying to teach them. If they're engaged, they learn. And it's needed elsewhere, but at least you're working. At least you're helping the area you're in. get there. I think that's needed all over.

Right. And what we're doing is creating a replicable model because we could create a curriculum that wasn't approved by the Ministry of Education, but then it would kind of stand alone and it wouldn't be able to be integrated into the other public schools' education systems. But by following their standard, now they can use our lesson plans. And we've written it in such a way that it applies not only in our town, but it applies throughout the country. And even potentially throughout a lot of Latin America who are facing a lot of the same problems, especially in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama. They're facing some of the same issues. And then potentially in Latin America and conceivably why not in the rest of the world that's dealing with yet again, a lot of the same problems.

Right. I feel like it's one of those, if you find, if you find the solution, should tell everyone. You show it, use it, fix the problem everywhere. And I love the fact that you intentionally were thinking about the long term, making sure that it could fit the requirements because every state and everything has their requirements for education. And that's, I think, been a big hurdle where people don't necessarily think about. They just go, oh, well, this is the best way to learn, but they don't think about how to make it easy for a public school to integrate. So that kind of thinking really makes integrating that stuff way easier because you're making it, you're making it easy for the teacher to go, well, it's, it meets all my actual requirements and it's better. So yeah, of course I'm going to do it.

Yeah. Doesn't really require that much teacher training. I mean, everybody does need some enhancement and some explanation, but it follows the basic course that they're already working with. And some of them have already tried it some and are like, yeah, this is kind of a no-brainer. This is way more interesting than what I was doing before. So why wouldn't I do this? And so, you know, we'll start dividing, we'll assign a public school, a sector of the town. They'll decide who is living in the most poverty. They'll do the surveys. And then, yeah, we should be able to have a pretty major impact on the people that are living in extreme poverty in that area within the next couple of years. And as far as I know, I don't know of another school that is doing that exact approach. There's a lot of schools, a lot of NGOs fighting a lot of poverty in a lot of different ways. I am not sure of who else is doing it that way.

I don't know of any either. It's not my expertise area, but a very unique— from the people I have talked to, it is a unique approach. So I'm really excited to see where things go. from here with you guys and see it. And obviously it's working now, but love to— I'm excited to see what happens after a couple of years of doing this.

Yeah, I am really excited to find out what, how the next chapter unfolds really. Cause there's a lot of potential and there's a lot of people suffering and we can have a major impact on that suffering as soon as we possibly can.

I love it. It is amazing. And I wish you the best. I hope that this just keeps growing and growing and does really well for you guys and for communities you're in. Before we wrap up here, I did want to— 2 things. One, anything we didn't cover that you wanted to mention, do that. And then how can people find you, reach out, connect, support you guys in what you're doing?

Well, thank you for this opportunity. This is how people find out, because we spent 17 years on the ground in Guatemala doing this. And didn't really take the traditional NGO approach. Um, so we were heavily focused on program services. How can we make sure that we're integrated into the community, understand, collaborate, earn the respect and the trust of the community? And we did not during that time do a very good job of promoting ourselves.

Right.

Not so easy to do from that space. We had a lot of help, a lot of really generous people. Have helped us while living in the States or other parts of the world, and they have gotten our name out and done a really wonderful job of that. But you know, we're not actually very good at that. So I really appreciate this opportunity for us to get our name out a little bit and for people to hear about this process. How can people help? Well, you can email me directly at matt@lwhome.org, so you can volunteer, and you could bring a service group. You can donate, you can bring school supplies. And going back to the volunteering thing, so we've had— so people come to our school to learn sustainable building techniques, right? And so that has been our earned income model, right? It doesn't cover all the bills. Basically, people pay us $85 to live in our volunteer house for a week. Then in exchange for that, we teach them how to greenbuild. Now some people stay for a week and people have stayed for as many as 7 or 8 years, right? Because they're fully engaged in the process.

That's awesome.

Yeah. And so the next real major opportunity is like our Indiana Jones version of what we do is coming up on October 20th to November 14th. That is when the students, the teachers, the volunteers, we all get together and we go out into one of the really remote poorer villages, and we're going to build 2 classrooms. And we're teaming up with an organization called ecohab.org, and their lead builder is going to work with us. And he's been green building for 30-plus years, really well known. His name is Phil Baisard. Google him. He's been doing this for a long time. And so you can jump into that workshop and work with us. And have that experience.

Amazing. Well, for everyone listening and watching, we will have links in the show notes. So don't worry, it'll be easy for you to find all that stuff. And Matt, I really appreciate you being on. I loved hearing about everything you're doing. Excited to see what comes out of the next couple of years.

Yeah. Thank you for this opportunity again. I really appreciate it.

Absolutely. And that wraps up another episode of the Conscious Design Podcast. If today's episode inspired you to bring your product idea to life and turn it into a sustainable, 7-figure business, visit petermanfirm.com or click the link below. Your ideas have the power to change the world, and we're here to help make that happen. Thank you for joining us, and I'll see you on the next episode.