Easing 'classroom crisis' in Cote d'Ivoire, brick by (plastic) brick.

In an innovative partnership, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and a Colombian social enterprise announced on Monday that it had broken ground on a first-of-its-kind factory to convert plastic waste in Cote d'Ivoire into modular, easy-to-assemble, low-cost plastic bricks for classrooms in the West African country.

'This factory will be at the cutting edge of smart, scalable solutions for some of the major education challenges that Africa's children and communities face,' said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. 'Its potential is threefold: more classrooms for children in Cote d'Ivoire, reduced plastic waste in the environment, and additional income avenues for the most vulnerable families.'

Cote d'Ivoire needs 15,000 classrooms to provide children with a place to learn.

Partnering with plastic and rubber waste recylcing company Conceptos Plasticos, UNICEF is using recycled plastic collected from polluted areas in and around Abidjan to build 500 classrooms for more than 25,000 children over the next two years, with the potential to increase production beyond.

'One of the major challenges facing Ivorian school children is a lack of classrooms,' said UNICEF Representative Aboubacar Kampo, who has championed the project from its inception.

Classrooms either don't exist or are overcrowded, making learning a challenging and unpleasant experience.

'In certain areas, for the first-time, kindergartners from poor neighborhoods would be able to attend classrooms with less than 100 other students', he elaborated. 'Children who never thought there would be a place for them at school will be able to learn and thrive in a new and clean classroom.'

While more than 280 tons of plastic waste are produced every day in Abidjan alone, only about five per cent is recycled. The rest ends up mostly in low-income communities' landfill sites in.

Plastic waste pollution exacerbates existing hygiene and sanitation challenges

And improper waste...