A few kilometres outside Maputo, Mozambique, is a strange and beautiful house. “Who lives there?” people always wonder. “Must be somebody interesting”.

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A wide veranda goes right round it, supported by columns of used car tyres. In the centre is a mud dome with hundreds of small glass circles. This is surrounded by a roof of metal tiles cut from pieces of corrugated iron and painted bright blue. The garden gate is an old bed.

Inside there are no straight lines. Thick mud walls have niches for books, vases and wire sculptures. Tall plants grow in alcoves and, in place of windows, coloured bottles set in the walls form bright patterns. Looking up you see that the skylights in the dome above are also bottles, facing inwards and letting in shafts of natural light. The doors are from bamboo and packing crates. Pebbles, sea shells and bottle tops decorate the floors and the bathroom is a mosaic of mirrors.

The owners, builders and occupants are Flavia and Chaku Chikamba. Chaku is from Malawi. They are a good looking couple, Chaku with his dreadlocks and Flavia very tall and elegant. “Chaku is a musician and I’m an art teacher” says Flavia. “So, as you can imagine, we don’t have much money. But that didn’t stop us. This house cost very little. Nearly everything came from the rubbish dump, or the beach or other people’s back yards. And it’s amazing - all our friends who live in concrete houses have to have air conditioning. But with such thick earth walls this house is always cool in summer and warm in winter. So it’s not only beautiful, it’s environmental too, because we save on electricity.

“We started out of necessity, but as we went on we got more and more interested and started reading a lot and getting ideas from all over the place. Now we are completely obsessed. We never ever throw anything away, because we know sooner or later we’ll find a use for it. Our hobby is poking around junkyards and beach combing. Recycling is a huge subject and we’ve got to make other people aware of how important it is. This is not easy but we can’t wait until it’s too late. All over the world we are seeing the disastrous results of thoughtless waste. The developed countries are the worst of course, but the developing ones are almost as bad. In the really developed ones they are at least beginning to become more aware and to change. I heard that in Japan they now produce CD’s made of paper. In the really poor countries everything is recycled anyway. Have you heard of the “Zebeleen” in Cairo? The people who live on the rubbish dumps and make a living out of what they find? They’ve become famous but of course every third world city has its own “Zebeleen”. Personally, I think it is the middle classes in the developing countries that need to change. They have just come out of poverty and don’t want to even think about going back to it, understandably. And so they have to have a concrete house, not a mud one for example. Even though a mud one will cost almost nothing and be just as good, even better, if it’s built properly. But they see it as something shameful. Governments don’t help. They should relax their ridiculous building regulations. In most urban areas in Africa you aren’t allowed to build out of mud. Which is why we are forced to live so far out of town.

“In my opinion Recyclability, (have I just invented that word?) should be enforced by law. No product should ever be non-biodegradable or non-recyclable. That should go without saying and be a basic feature of all good design. I was reading about the tons of computers on rubbish dumps in developed countries. Keyboards, monitors and stuff. Mountains and mountains of it! All non reusable and full of horrible toxic substances! Now new laws are forcing manufactures to make these out of reusable materials. The cost of recycling has to be included in the cost of the product, which is a good thing. It should apply to everything. Cars. Fridges. Washing machines. Buildings even.

“At home people have to understand that almost everything is reusable or recyclable. “Waste material” does not exist. Nothing should ever go to waste. Not even from your own body. We have a compost toilet, which turns shit into organic fertiliser. Urine is already. It’s full of nitrogen which plants need. We dilute it and use it in our vegetable garden, and on the roses. People have got to stop being squeamish about these things. To us it’s a way of life.”

As an art teacher Flavia has a golden opportunity to educate children about recycling. The children have made and decorated their own desks and chairs from papier mache, using old newspaper. It’s light, colourful and surprisingly strong. Her classroom walls are full of wonderful pictures and objects the children have made from things their parents throw in the dustbin. Recently she took them to see the Zimbabwean animated film Legend of the Sky Kingdom, in which the characters are all made of everyday objects - springs, bottle openers, old pairs of scissors, match boxes. “It really inspired them” she says. “Now they are making puppets and putting on shows”.

Flavia has also got her musical husband involved. Chaku has helped the kids make their own instruments - guitars from oil cans, drums from plastic buckets, mbiras from blocks of wood and old nails beaten flat, and now he’s teaching them to play. His own guitar is a work of art, and the envy of all. He has made and sold a few like it to some well known musicians and a shop in South Africa has given him an order for several more.

“Like Flavia says” he explains “it’s a way of life. Recycling is only part of it. When the environment – the state of our land, sea and air – comes first everything else logically follows. From the food you eat and the clothes you wear (all ours are second hand and we’re the most stylish people we know) to your political and religious beliefs. It affects every aspect of your life and gives it a meaning, a spirituality. When you see people who are real consumers and living in that throw-away culture you feel sorry for them, you really feel how empty and unsatisfying it must be”.

Note: mbira: African thumb piano

Do people recycle where you live? If not, why not? What more could be done to pursuade people to recycle?