In the Israeli town of Yeruham, located in the middle of the barren Negev desert, colorful mountains of glass reach 50 feet into the air. The Phoenicia Glass Works Ltd. factory, which both recycles old glass bottles and makes new ones from sand hauled in from the surrounding area, ends up producing thousands of defective bottles during production.

The imperfect bottles are ground up and tossed onto piles with the rest of the rejects, to be melted down later. Oded Bality, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Israeli photographer with the Associated Press, captured these otherworldly mounds of green, blue and brown shards which stretch the length of several soccer fields.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.