Americans threw away 33 million tons of plastic in 2013, according to the EPA. How long does it take a plastic bottle to degrade in a landfill? Some say 500 years, some say 1,000. Plastic hasn’t been around long enough. We (in our lifetime) will never know how long today’s petroleum-based plastic bottles take to break down in the environment. But we can do something with them while they’re around.
Plastic Bottle Homes Around the World
Eco-Tec’s Casa de la Fe. Used vehicle wheel rims make up the foundation and some of the pillars.
Casa de la Fe (Faith House) Honduran Foundation for the Rehabilitation and Integration of the Handicapped. The texture of the outside surface depends on which way the bottles face. eco-tecnologia.com
Eco Tec’s Sky Field House under construction.
How To Help? Buy A Reusable Water Bottle
The best thing, of course, would be to stop using plastic water bottles completely. We recommend these eco-friendly, reusable water bottles.
- Hydro Flask Insulated Stainless Steel Water Bottle
- Stanley Vacuum Insulated Water Bottle
- Nalgene Tritan Wide Mouth BPA-Free Water Bottle
An Eco-Tec home in Bolivia. PET bottle bottoms on the left. Wine bottle bottoms on the right.
This home in Bolivia incorporates lots of wine bottles as well as PET bottles. Here they used concrete pillars instead of PET columns.
Eco-Tec Africa – solving Nigeria’s housing shortage. Ecotec-Africa & physorg.com
Polli’s self interlocking plastic bricks are translucent thereby allowing the play of natural light to shine through. The manufacturers add they are good thermal and sound insulators and can withstand hurricane force winds. No BPA, but wish they could make the fireproof backing curtain for walls out of something other than PVC. Can be used for walls, greenhouses, roofs, etc.
Ecological Bottle House, near the Iguazu Falls, Misiones, Argentina.
Photo credit: Xinhua/Martin Zabala. Love the bottle cap curtains!
The family will instruct anyone who is up for a visit, or if you pay for their travel expenses, they will come to you. sites.google.com
Water bottle wall in Danone office, Tokyo. Great idea as partitions in an office!
The Morimoto Restaurant’s bottle wall in NYC is composed of 17,400 half liter plastic bottles filled with mineral water and then backlit with LED lights. Originally found at “morimotonyc.com”
Water bottle wall. The wall is two stories high.
Back outside…
Plastic Bottle Greenhouses
Plastic bottle greenhouse on Blue Rock Station, Ohio. This one sits on old tires and is made from 1000 2-liter plastic soft drink bottles. Flickr photo by ticticticticboom
Plastic bottle greenhouses are all the rage in Europe. Picasa-Cudlees.
Owlsoup Photo on Flickr
Plastic Bottle Greenhouse
Photo by bryanilona on Flickr
A Danish plastic bottle shed. Flickr photo By christof
Plastic Bottle House Innovations
Eco-Tec’s Ecoparque El Zamorano, Honduras.
Ecological House: Constructed with 8,000 bottles with composting toilets and a solar water heating system. The green roof can weigh 30 tons when wet and has been supported by the walls without any extra reinforcement. It is the first house in the world made from PET bottles without using cement in the walls.
Tomislav Radovanic, a retired math professor from central Serbia has built a house of waste plastic. “The house is comfortable and it practically cost me nothing,” Radovanovic said, adding that the bottles are good insulators. The foundation is concrete but all else is plastic; gutters, windows and furniture are made from recycled bottles. Freerepublic.com
Eco Tec’s Sky Field House: The first vaulted ceiling using PET bottles.
All Eco-tec projects have a strong social focus. Most of the PET bottles used are recovered in clean-up campaigns and recycling drives. The community then fills them with sand. They train the unemployed and handicapped in their construction methods. They build water tanks, schools, community centers, urban benches as well as homes. Andreas Froese, Eco-Tec’s inventor hopes to also build some PET homes in Haiti utilizing construction debris. Most of the PET bottles used are recovered in clean-up campaigns and recycling drives. (www.eco-tecnologia.com)
Ecological Bottle House, near the Iguazu Falls, Misiones, Argentina.
Alfredo Santa Cruz and his family built this house and matching play house out of used plastic bottles, Tetra Packs and CD cases. They used 1200 PET plastic bottles for the walls, 1300 milk and wine Tetra Pack boxes for the roof, 140 CD cases for the doors and windows, plus 320 PET bottles for the furniture. (sites.google.com)
Taiwan’s plastic bottle building: EcoARK Exhibition Hall.
Not just a bottle picked off the street. Polli-Brick from Minimize is made from recycled PET bottles. The building can be disassembled and then reassembled elsewhere. Looks like that might take a bit of time though as the building is 279 feet long.
Plastic Bottle Houses Under Construction
Plastic Bottle Construction. Cement.
Plastic Bottle Construction. Adobe.
Plastic Bottle Construction. Eco-Tec in Bolivia
Plastic Bottle Construction. Eco-Tec builds many cisterns/water tanks.
Plastic Bottle Construction. How to make an arch.
A painted wall.
Eco-Tec’s aquaduct.
How To Build A Plastic Bottle House
- Eco-Tec How to booklet: docs.google.com
- Hug it Forward Bottle School Wiki: bottleschools.org
- Blue Rock Station in Ohio sells an illustrated booklet on
How to Build a Plastic Bottle Greenhouse
So……ooooooo great to see the plastic staying out of the oceans and being utilized in this way. Stunning AND beautiful.
E
I am so greatful to see people implementing great ideas. I am curious if the same methods could be employed to build dahms as the sea level rises.
Love it! I think I would like to implement the idea for my garden and create a small greenhouse of my own in my backyard.
iDEA SEEMS INTERESTING
bUT, how long will they last in the sun and hot weather?
What about salt spray environment of Ocean climates?
Will the useful life be extended if they are filled with water?
filled with sand?
This is fascinating….why wouldn’t plastic be durable?
I would think sand would definitely help the strength and insulation of the structure, don’t know if it will help to prevent the plastic from degrading. Found a site saying plastic jugs may take as long as a million years to fully degrade!
If building with exposed plastic bottles in a hot, sunny climate I would be worried about off gassing. If covered well, I would not worry about degradation or offgassing… Cheers!
i love what you are doing. keep up the good work!
I would like to give it a try of constructing a wall around our lot using PET bottles with cement. But is that simply mixing cement with the bottles?
Hope I could get some ideas here.
Thanks!
I just want to thank you for all of the interesting ideas,.. I would love to hear more about what you are doing now and in the future.
Thanks again for the terrific ideas for the kids and I to put to work =)
Would love to start building plastic bottles green house, can you share step by step how to build it? adobe and plastic house are in my heart too!!! Thank you 🙂 Keep shining
thank you for what you doing, hoping that it will reach more humans mind to work out a better world. thank you please continue
Great ideas on what to do with plastic bottles In Bolivia I saw an outdoor eating space that had embedded bottle caps into the ground to create a floor!
This is awesome! HELP SPREAD THIS INFORMATION!!! Share it with everyone and help make a difference in your world!
-Scarpace
What a great article!!! Take a look at this – ‘bottle schools’ in Guatemala: http://www.hugitforward.com – Hug It Forward, a US non-profit has enabled the building of 7 bottle schools in Guatemala since October 2009, with more projects under way! They’re showing that this can be a technology for large-scale use and not just for one-off homes.
Almost unbelievable, it is getting even more beautyful!!! And i always hated plastic bottles.
A W E S O M E !!!!!
fantastic
Faced with rocketing construction costs and no funds, this is an amazing alternative – I’ll look for more information!
Hi every one ,, thank you for the link
Great , very nice , hope every one save the Mother nature …
Respect
From Morocco
Wonderful Idea…
What a great idea! The bottles are more beautiful now than ever before. This truely makes the world a better place. I am inspired to do the same.
I have thought for years that villages in flood-zones should build their houses on rafts made from PET bottles to float up in safety when the rivers rise. But this takes it a whole lot further. Brilliant, innovative, resourceful, beautiful, intelligent, local responses to need and capacity. More please!!!!!
Amazing. One mans trash, another mans home !!!!
…remarkable, imaginative, creative, practical ingenuity with a purpose…
My father inspired me to work with plastic soda bottles – he would have loved seeing these!
Simply the best ! thank you so much… from Belgium. http://www.planetfuture.org We fight hunger, co2 and save water with plants and trees in collected bottles and recovered seeds from our fruits. Success all of you !
Fantastic job I would like to build a sample house in sri lanka , If possible pl advice us
What a great idea. It should be done all over the world.
This makes me so happy.
How can we go about getting this kind of construction approved for use in the US? Here there are too many restrictive building codes and rules that prohibit anything out of the ‘ordinary.’
What great ideas to recycle! I particularly like the projects where you can’t really tell it’s plastic bottles.
Most plastic breaks down in UV rays from the sun. How earthquake resistant are these plastic filled houses with the heavy roofs? How fire proof?
The Hug it Forward group says their plastic bottle schools are very earthquake resistant. http://www.inspirationgreen.com/plastic-bottle-schools Plus, I would think they would be very fire resistant as well. But, yes exposed plastic would offgas a bit in a tropical sunny locale. I do not think the exposed plastic would break down very quickly though. Best.
this is a most extraordinary fantastically practical method of building – i saw some of this in Hawaii Fern forest back in 1992 from cans mostly……. food for thought, think i’ll make something like a shed or greenhouse to begin! got me well inspired thankyou all for sharing this one <3
Where can I get a building plan for a plastic bottle greenhouse?
I see some of you are asking about durability, how fireproof and earthquake-proof the buildings may be.
Fireproof is a an easy one, if the bottles are filled with sand/earth. Even if they are mudded over, they’ll be shielded and likely do fine.
Someone else commented that earthquake resistance seems to be proving very good.
Reusing these bottles right at home makes far more sense than shipping them elsewhere to be broken back down… but no matter what, please don’t allow plastic bottles, bags, etc. to go into the garbage. Even from the middle of a continent, some of that stuff gets into the ocean, and has deadly effect. From the coast, it’s a sure thing it’ll end up in a whale’s stomach and kill one of those magnificent beings.
Please, be kind. This is the only home we’ve got.
this is an amazing way to use the bottles. in India, we have a tremendous nuisance of plastic waste generated each day, where the people are not educated about the hazards of that, nor the appropriate disposal.
i do have a doubt that i wanna clear, if the plastic degenerates and breaks in the sun, would the houses stand up for a longer period? what about water proofing? our rains may wash something like this in no time, i would like to experiment on this in India and make one here. would your team help us? you can take a look at our website also
http://www.prithvi.org.in
i am interested in using this design to –
popularize amongst the rural area,
an alternative, as well as utilizing a category of waste that will stand for a long time, and would not destroy the mother earth. more details please
thanks, Sharmila
Nice communication back from Hug it Forward (see http://www.inspirationgreen.com/plastic-bottle-schools.html) who have helped communities build 7 bottle schools in Guatemala.
‘The plastic bottles degenerating in the sun is not an issue because the plastic bottles are not exposed to the sun. There is a layer of cement stucco on each side of the bottle walls. Without this, the classrooms would not be structurally sound – and would also get extremely hot!
These schools were designed with the climate of Guatemala in mind, a country subject to earthquakes as well as tropical storms and hurricanes. Independent structural analysis has confirmed the strength of this building method. The schools should last for at least 100 years.’
Yes, but what about outgassing? You’ll be inhaling the crap forever & suffocate inside.
Don’t you think we might feel like living inside a plastic wrap?
What an outstandingly brilliant idea to be rid of the loads of plastic bottles etc. which people insist on buying then throwing away! The homes and businesses look really lovely with the plastic bottle constructions!
hermoso me gustaria construir una en una isla en chiloe
ca construction techniques like this, even double walled, yield fire-proof, cheap high R value walls for Northern Canada, the native and white popultions their, alike? We have ‘Stackwood’ from University of Manitoba files, using old rail road ties, We have Straw Bale up and working well, but we need more! can the bottles be filled with cheap expanding foam, for better ridgidity, higher R value, so important in our very cold winters? Can native Canadians redeem themselves? House themselves? even if only to build garages? Storage sheds? Outside the nortoriuosly corproate protective civil building laws? I wonder.
wont work in norway, since we get money back from the store when give the bottle back
Glass gets crushed and eventually becomes sand again.
Location, location, location.
Once you’ve got a place to build where the humans won’t attack you it’s easy.
What a marvelous way to save the earth from waste it doesn’t need and to give people around the globe a way to reconstruct their lives. I’m impressed!
I want to build a garage in Maine–heavy snow and freezing winter weather–anybody got ideas of experience with this?
excellent work congrates
Great pictures and ideas! I love that people are using their heads to figure out ways to use all the ‘junk’ humans leave behind.
Simple ideas are always the greatest ideas. I would love to have a green house and furniture made of recycled plastic bottles. Thanks.
These are great! I am a papercrete fan and want to try plastic with papercrete! I had thought this would be ideal for areas that don’t have clay. We have used papercrete with just a lime wash coating in Wisconsin and it has held up very well! Also Paper plaster, spreads like butter!