Things To Do With Bottles – Building

From an environmentalist’s point of view, each bottle is a small treasure. Be it a glass bottle or a PET bottle, you can recycle it or reuse it… the latter being much better. Let’s look at two interesting examples of how reused bottles can be used in building eco-friendly houses.

The first one is from Granados in Guatemala. A Peace Corps volunteer Laura Kutner enlisted help of the locals and built a school from 6,000 plastic bottles.

Waste is a problem in countries like Guatemala. The Peace Corps rummaged around the villages and picked up every usable bit of waste. The PET bottles were filled with plastic bags and other plastic waste.

The gaps received a good filling of waste as well. The walls were made of batches that were enclosed in wire mesh. Then several layers of cement (alas, not very green) were added to exclude the draught and make it all look like a house.

The pics suggest that the school already had a structurally sound metal frame. Walls like this will not be weight-bearing, so no worries there. However, the bottle batches should be fixed to the metal frame to make sure they don’t move.

In green design projects like this it is important to inspect the foundation (the ground if there’s no foundation) and the frame.

Each section of the bottle wall including the cement would weigh several tons and it would be wise to check if the ground AND the frame can cope with that. I’m not saying the Peace Corps didn’t inspect the building, I’m just making a note for those who might attempt to build a similar eco-friendly house.

The next example has been made from glass bottles and a wide array of reclaimed green materials. Martin Sanchez, whose hobby is folk art, has created this cute little chapel at the back of his “Martin’s Tio’s Tacos” bar on Mission Inn Avenue in Riverside, California.

It is situated in the middle of a secluded garden. No new materials have been used in this tiny eco-friendly house. The chapel is mainly constructed from glass bottles (as a restaurateur he has had no problem with finding bottles to reuse) and reclaimed items.

How can we use glass bottles, you might ask? Just like we use normal glass tiles. You can stick the bottles together with a Vetromix-type mortar. Don’t forget to use a loose wire mesh or a rod system to ensure that the glass wall stays upright 🙂 we don’t want any accidents. Please note that the chapel in California is very small and that glass bottles shouldn’t be used in any weight-bearing walls, however, they should do wonders for a divider wall between a kitchen and a lounge or a decorative wall in a bathroom; especially if you add a lighting effect on one side of the wall.