I'm Rather Green

So this made me feel all warm and gooey.

The Houses That PET Built

Eco-minded architects and designers are making treasure out of trash by recycling used PET bottles into beautiful, sustainable, buildings.



One of the wonderful things about being recycle-minded is that every piece of trash is an opportunity to recreate something wonderful.  At least, that’s the way I felt when I saw testaments to the miracle of recycling — houses, cisterns, furniture, bus stops and even entire schools — made from recycled PET plastic bottles.





Eco-tec, an award-winning Honduran company, has used recycled PET plastic bottles for construction of houses, water tanks, and even schools. 

Using some 8,000 PET recycled bottles, Eco-Tec created the “casa ecológica” or ecological house, as a means of providing sustainable construction methods and employment in Honduras.

70% of the structures built by Eco-Tec are made up of recycled PET bottles reclaimed from landfills and local clean-up projects.  The bottles are filled with sand and sealed before construction use.

Each casa ecologica  has a “living roof” made from sod and turf which insulates the house better than a conventional roof.  And although the roof weighs in at 30 metric tons when wet, the PET bottle walls to support the weight without effort.