End Homelessness In America With Something We Throw Away Every Day. This Could Really Work

December 23, 2013

Photo: Steven Depolo

The United States consumes 1500 water bottles every second. Of the 50 billion bottles of water being bought each year, 80% of them end up in landfills.

You might not know this but houses can be built out of water bottles. By filling them with sand and molding them together with mud or cement, these walls are just as strong as cinder blocks.

To build a two bedroom, 1200 square foot home, it would take roughly 14,000 bottles. The United States throws away enough plastic water bottles to build over 9,000 of these sized homes each day!

Pictured above is the first house in Africa built from bottles, which could go a long way in solving Nigeria's huge housing need and cleaning the badly polluted environment.

Hopefully this idea will catch on in America.

Sources: phys.org / treehugger.com