Sitting in Si Sa Ket, 400 miles from Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, is an extraordinary temple, which took monks over 20 years and 1.5 million empty beer bottles to build. It is thus called “The Temple of a Million Bottles”.

The monks of the temple started collecting glass beer bottles in 1984. Inspired by the large number of empty beer bottles, they decided to use these bottles as construction materials to build a temple. Since then, 20 buildings have been constructed with recycled glass bottles, including the main palace hall, crematory, prayer room, water tower, visitor rest room, several monk dorms, and so on. Even some Buddha statues are made of lids and chips of the recycled beer bottles.

To guarantee the strength of the buildings, concrete is used as the "core" in temple construction. Two kinds of beer bottles are widely utilized: the green Heineken beer bottles and the brown local Elephant beer bottles. What these bottles have in common are their non-fading colors, excellent shine, and easy-clean feature.

Recycling discarded beer bottles not only benefits the local environment, but also lowers the construction cost of the temple. No wonder the temple monks are now seeking assistance from the government to encourage the collection of beer bottles, the more the better.

Source:
http://press.idoican.com.cn/detail/articles/20090220501241/