OTHALO is old norse and anglo-saxon and is seen as the expansion of the light of individual and collective human consciousness against the forces of ignorance and darkness of the world.
OTHALO™ has developed a patent technology to manufacture building systems using recycled plastic waste. The main market is the developing world where there is a massive need of affordable houses, refugee shelters, temperature controlled units for storage of food and medicines, camps (hospitals, schools, temporary living) for disasters and emergency situations. Our core customers and partners are governments and humanitarian organizations.
The founder, Frank Cato Lahti, has been developing and testing the OTHALO™ technology in partnership with SINTEF in Trondheim and the University in Tromsø. The company was formally established and patent applications filed in 2019. After years of self-funding the development, OTHALO™ is now in a position to scale up the company, supported by UN Habitat, global thought-leaders and many engaged partners.
It all started at his home in the high arctic, in an island in the middle of the Barentssea. It is a small community of 2000 people living there, and the only reason people settled here over a thousand year ago is due to the rich fishing waters around the island. The entire history and existence of this community is based on rich, clean, life-sustainable water. Every year the local community gathers to clean up the shore of the island, pick the waste, which mostly is plastic waste.
One day Frank was looking out over the bay where his house is situated, looking at the beach covered in plastic waste that the last autumn storm had thrown ashore he was puzzled about the waste.
Most of the waste was not local, not even from Norwegian sources, but it came from all over the world and brought up to the most remote part of the northern hemisphere by the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current.
If is this bad up in the northern part of the world, how is it in the rest of the world? Everyone knew and had heard that the world is suffocating in plastic waste, but how bad is it really? How does it impact life? When you take one step back and stop looking at numbers and look into how it actually ruins life on the planet, how it destroys habitat, how it gets into the foodchain and in the end ends up in whales, polarbears, fish and eventually in humans.
Frank have a background that have allowed him to travel around the world, and he had seen the need for housing around the world.
“What if one could use the plastic waste problem to solve the housing deficiency problem? What if one could create a system that allowed man to use the local plastic waste to solve the local need for housing?” That is how it all started.
The global need for OTHALO™ products is massive and contantly growing. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, there is an urgent need for 160M affordable houses – expected to grow to 360M by 2050. And the plastic waste problem is a global threat that OTHALO™ can assist in solving by using millions of tons of plastic waste to create building systems for affordable houses. OTHALO™ is on a threefold mission: solve the housing crises, utilize plastic waste and create jobs locally. Together we will empower local communities and support economies to thrive!
