Save Our Planet: Homes Made of Bottles

I love the idea of building homes and other buildings using what some would call garbage. Some places old car and truck tires are used to build the walls, or in some cases, bales of hay, tin drink cans, even plastic or glass bottles, to name just some things. There are actually many different ways of doing this sort of thing.  I have read on the internet about Earthships which are built of tires, bales, bottles, etc. and are fully self contained with their own power supplies, water filtering systems, and such like that. Sadly, here where I live one would not be able to get a building permit to build homes like this.... or at least this has been the rule, but it may be changing now.  I was doing some surfing the net a night or two ago and was surprised to find some links to building Earthships not only in Canada, but also in British Columbia!! Still, so far as I know the community I live in still doesn't allow this kind of building.  I hope I am wrong, or that things are changing and we will soon be cleared to build homes by recycling things that would otherwise end up in land fill locations and other 'dead stuff' storage places.

 The "Inspiration Green" website shows us many photos of homes and greenhouses built with plastic bottles.  Well worth the visit!!

  Just think about this.... take some of these plastic bottles that were once used for water, soda pop, or fruit juice.  Rescue them from streams, streets, garbage dumps, and werever else they may end up.  Where I live we have recycle programs, so when we purchase the drinks we pay extra for the bottles and then when we take the bottles back to the 'recycle depot', we are given a refund.  This can add up to a tidy sum of money if you have many of these bottles to return.  However, I know that not everywhere has these recycle programs.  For example, I occasionally go to Washington state in the USA and the first time I was there, for the Omak Stampede and World Famous Suicide Race, I was shocked at how many bottles and cans were left laying on the ground all around the stampede grounds, carnival rides, vendor booths, etc. It turns out that WA has no recycle program in place for these items, so people just throw them into trash cans that are near by, or onto the ground.  When I think of how they could be used to build homes for the homeless..... wow.
 
I love the colors of the glass bottles used to build this wall:

I found it interesting to see that on this wall different sizes and shapes of glass bottles were used:

On this wall, check out the way they do the corners of the wall:

These 2 photos were taken from inside buildings, showing how the light comes in through the glass bottles:

 This building has inside and outside walls done in bottles, so far as I can tell by this photo:

 You can even make a free standing wall like this in your yard/garden. I love the art work in this wall:

 Entire homes built from bottles that may otherwise have been taken to garbage dumps:

Look at all the detail in this man's home!  Different colors of bottles, or painted after the walls were finished? I think the latter, but I leave it up to you to decide what you think.   Taking a close look I see they were all plastic bottles, likely from soda pop:

If you aren't partial to the look of bottles for your home, you can always cover them up:

 Though personally, I think they can be made to look rather attractive:

A Monastery:

A Greenhouse:

And even chandeliers built recycling empty bottles: 

Here are some ideas for other things that can be built with empty bottles:

A cistern to collect and hold water:

A church:

Ummm, okay, I don't know what this is exactly, but I think it a very interesting work of art:

No doubt it is a lot of work to make these buildings, yet these photos show that it can be a family or community shared project, maybe even a wonderful social experience, and might even be rather fun for some:

 Even a crab can see that an old bottle makes a good home:

 At the end of the day, when you are hot, tired and thirsty, you can always go to the local bar for a nice cold drink: