Message in plastic bottles

GO NICHE:EVER DREAMT of owning your very own tropical island? It may be more possible than you think – though you might have to drink a lot of bottled water to get it.

Just check out the achievements of British eco-maverick Richart Sowa off the Caribbean coast in Mexico.

In the late 1990s, he began collecting plastic water bottles from dumps near Cancun, stuffing them into fishing nets, tying them to old wooden pallets and bamboo, and covering the surface with sand. Et voilà, his very own desert island.

Over time he built a two-storey house on it, totally self-contained with a solar oven and a self-composting toilet.

He planted mangroves which grew large enough to provide him with shade, had a thriving vegetable patch and three beaches on which to chill. YouTube has a Ripley's Believe it or Not!featuring it, and it looks gorgeous.

In all some 250,000 plastic bottles – and presumably the benign neglect of the local authorities – kept his dream afloat.

Unfortunately, in 2005, hurricane Emily provided a rude awakening, washing the entire island onshore (albeit in one well-crafted piece).

Undaunted, Sowa tried again, beginning work on Spiral Island II in 2007, in a lagoon off Islas Mujeres.

The new island has a diameter of 20m, on a base of 120,000 bottles.

The flowers, plants and mangroves have again taken root, the new beaches are in situ and, this time, a pond and solar powered waterfall take pride of place.

The island is open for guided tours and, if nothing else, puts paid to the old property industry adage that they’re not making any more land.

spiralislanders.com