The Million Bottle Temple

I'm always excited about the intersections of sustainability and beer, but my subject today exceeds most expectations of recycling and repurposing materials.

In the Sisaket area of Thailand, Buddhist monks have constucted one of the most resourceful and beautiful examples of repurposed recyclables in architecture.

Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew is comprised of over 1.5 million glass beer bottles, making its nickname The Million Bottle Temple rather an understatement.

Local Buddhist monks began collecting bottles in 1984, reducing litter and municipal waste in the area, and its denizens report that the added benefits of beer bottles as building materials includes ample natural lighting that filters through mostly green Heineken and brown Chang bottles. So it appears that designs with repurposed beer bottles did not, as hypothesised, spring from an Etsy shop.

This is the temple's gorgeous exterior:

Photo credit: Mark Fischer.

#sustainability #beer #thailand #architecture