Building a house with glass bottles! This couple could find affordable and eco-friendly way to build their house

This house blew us away! Doris Dias and Robson Lopes didn’t decide to use thousands of glass bottles to build their house out of joy. The couple had no money and so they thought about an economical and at the same time ecological solution, and used glass bottles!

Doris Dias

They had lost their jobs, but even that wasn’t a reason for them to stop going for their dream. For this, they collected, with the help of their relatives, thousands of 600 ml glass bottles from everywhere. It was the raw material for building the walls of their house on land in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil.

The hard times

Doris Dias

In April 2020, they started building their house. They had been married for six years. Doris lost her job as a social worker due to health issues and her husband, Robson, lost his in a supermarket. Their situation was precarious.

The couple could no longer pay their rent and had to return to Doris’ parents. They then decided to build their own house on the land. Unfortunately, it would be very expensive and they decided to find more affordable alternatives.

The start of the dream

Doris Dias

It was on the Internet that they discovered that you could build anything using glass bottles.

“It’s very expensive to buy masonry material and wood. I tried to live in a bus but it didn’t work. I looked for a container and saw that it was also in my budget. I got all excited and started looking at the bottles and the bottles stared at me. I did some research and saw some houses made out of glass bottles that after construction didn’t even look like it was done that way. I thought why not?”

Doris Dias

They and their family therefore collected all the bottles they found. Their project was shared on social networks and they managed to collect more than ten thousand bottles. They were so happy for that!

They laid the floor and then mounted the walls using wooden supports, bottles, cement and sand. The house will be almost 70 square meters including  bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen. The couple also wanted to favor an ecological option, as they had done for their wedding:

Doris Dias

“All the decoration for my wedding was made of recyclable materials. It was magnificent. We went to collect bottles in the street and we asked our friends to do the same and bring them to us at home, we made a social media campaign and now this is our home.”

Fortunately, the couple can count on both their ingenuity and their loved ones who help them.