A place for rest and reduction of black landfills at the same time. These are the main ideas of a cozy shelter, which is coming into existence at the Faculty of Civil Engineering BUT. "We really like how you can enter an open lodge in the open countryside of Scandinavia, make there a campfire and sleep there, clean up and return everything back to its original state in the morning. Our crystal is built exactly in the same way and in addition to that it also helps to clean the countryside," says Ondřej Venclík, a member of the Plastic Crystal team.

What is it all about? It is a construction offering relaxation in the countryside, consisting of a wooden base, covered with plastic plates made of collected waste. The shelter will not protect you only from bad weather, but also from the fast-moving times of modern civilization. One shelter carries more than half a ton of recycled plastic waste. "Plastic turns into waste after a single use and loses any value. We are trying to restore the dignity of this material of the future. This is one of the reasons why we have chosen a form of a crystal that is notorious for its refined form," explains his ecological perception another team member, Marco Aulisa.

Plastic crystal, as the authors call it, combines wood with plastic. We could say with exaggeration that what nature cannot cope with, Marco, Štěpán and Ondřej can tackle. "For the time being, we get plastic from our friends and acquaintances or collect it in our spare time. We also try to cooperate with the organization Trash Hero Brno, which cleans the public space in the city of Brno and its surroundings. In the future we will also contact recycling centers. Of course, the primary goal is to use the waste collected in the very forest where Plastic Crystal will be situated," says Marco.

Building a single shelter takes about a month. However, the students would like to cut the time in half in the future. The final number of the shelters they will place into the countryside and the reaction of the public are all in stars so far. "We will try to plant these shelters into the woods near hiking trails so that tourists could use them to spend the night there. At the same time, it will be a great test for the Czech mentality because we do not have many objects with free access like these," concludes Štěpán Macek, another member of the team. More information about the project is available at www.plastic-crystal.com.