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A house made out of plastic bottles. Photo: The Ecological Bottle House
We've heard of the icy house from Detroit; now it's time for Argentina to step up to the plate. Our jaws dropped when we spotted this structure made from plastic bottles on Inhabitot.com. Lovingly nicknamed La Casa de Botellas or 'The Ecological Bottle House,' a family in Puerto Iguazu, Argentina has created their home from household materials that others would haul off to the local garbage dump.
Even the furnishings are made from bottles! Photo: The Ecological Bottle House
Hoping friends and neighbors will see their home as a commitment to caring for the planet, the Santa Cruz family built their home's entire structure and all of furnishings (including the bed above) within from plastic bottles, aluminum cans, Tetra Pak boxboard and other recycled goods.
As if this project wasn't quite daunting enough, homeowner (and builder) Alfredo Santa Cruz also designed a smaller playhouse version of the bottle home for his young daughter, which you can see in the photo below.
There's even a miniature, playhouse version of the home. Photo: The Ecological Bottle House
1200 PET plastic bottles in its walls
1300 milk and wine Tetra Pack containers in its roof
140 compact disk boxes in its doors and windows
120 PET plastic bottles in the couches
200 PET plastic bottles in the bed
Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)
A house like that might be good in Argentina, but it wouldn't keep out the drafts in a cold New England winter...Kudos to the guy for recycling, but we'd need a more rugged design for the colder climes up north here...I can't see getting this house design past the local building code inspector...
ReplyReminds me of the beer commercial
I'd say that the lesson to learn from this is that you can do SOMETHING with the bottles other than the landfill. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
a fire would be terrible, burning plastic with toxic smoke and hes got kids in there?
Nothing new. Dennis Weaver built a house out of glass bottles years ago. Other houses with similar recycled materials have been in the news over the years.
ReplyIt reminds me of the 100 year old "Bottle House" in the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada just between Death Valley and Beatty, NV
ReplyI'm from Vermont where the coldest winter temps can get to -2o, even -30. (I once saw it go to -36 way back in the early 80's).
ReplyThere is a home made from cordwood in Monkton. The guy used regular cordwood you get anywhere, stacked in a circle, with the ends inside and out (arranged like a starburst). The house is circular. It is warm as all get-out. He got a HUGE house for peanuts.
As far as plastic bottles go, I imagine they's make good greenhouses (for plants). I have used water-filled plastic bottles as both plant cloches and seed incubators. Place a row of water-filled 2 liters on each side of a row of plants and cover with clear plastic. In the daytime the sun heats the water, and at night it releases the heat to keep young plants warm. Also 2-liters with the bottom cut out make good hotcaps over new seedlings.
I have been studying the method for building a small home near our parents. It is labor intensive but the cost and the environmental things are superb.
Now that's what I call recycling!
Replyyour can walk around butt naked and people will see you.
ReplyWere they to fill the bottles with sand or with recycles peanuts for packaging, then the insulation problems might be solved. Use a combination of sand and a minimum of concrete to fill in between and it would be airtight and would keep in heat in the winter, and keep it out in the summer.
ReplyLots of great ideas coming out here. Now if everyone will try them. We could solve homelessness and save the planet (at least in part) by these ideas. Filling them with sand for insulation sounds good to me. Clear silicone would seal spaces between bottles. I lve how even their furniture was made from wood and bottles. Doll house and all . I can't wait to do one for my granddaughters.
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