But some organizations in Africa have decided to give them a better destination than the recycling plant and built a house with it. In Kaduna State, Nigeria, to be precise.
The plastic bottles were filled with earth and mud and the builders say the three-room structure is so sturdy it could stand for thousands of years.
What’s better, the bottle house will run on solar power, features a fuel-efficient clean stove, urine filtration fertilization systems and water purification tanks, which makes it pretty much a self-sufficient building.
The bottle house is a result of the work initiated by Katrin Macmillan, who launched Nigeria’s bottle recycling program in December 2010. The program gets the bottles from hotels, restaurants, homes and embassies and has rid the environment from thousands of bottles.
The project counted on collaborations from Yahaya Ahmed, CEO of Development Association for Renewable Energies (DARE); Andres Froesse, founder of Eco-Tec Soluciones Ambientales (Honduras), who went to Nigeria to train local masons in the bottle building technique; engineer Chris Vassilou, who donated the land.
There are other bottle buildings in the pipeline. The next Nigerian bottle building project is a school hall in Seluja at the Africa School of Excellence, which urgently needs classroom space.
The school children are being trained in the bottle brick making technique and the newly trained masons will lead the build in January 2012.
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This a very informative post. I wonder if something like this could be accomplished tht USA in the higher elevations. Wouldent it be great if we could cut building costs and save some trees to clean the air at the same time. I love the idea of self contained home to stop the high electric bills.
This is so out of the box. Laudable! 🙂 Just thinking aloud…, the eath and mud in the bottles can keep any fire or electrical accident away right?
Absolutely, it’s a great idea from whichever angle you look at it!