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.

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.

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

Plastic Bottle House Videos