One million bottles of beer on the wall.... (you know the rest!)

In what can only be described as pure beauty, the Tibetan monks decided to create a building made solely of glass beer bottles, as shown in greenUPGRADER (link)

It's actually really quite beautiful, and what's even more interesting is that they had it made at no cost whatsoever.

The thing which rings in my head however is that in a sense, doesn't the building create a purpose for drinking then? It also raised another question in my mind which was that there should be a push towards using glass bottles for EVERY drink bottle (sure, this sounds ridiculous, but think about it logistically, sand + fire = glass).

There is a dying art of Glass-blowers, I met one who was absolutely fantastic in Canada last year. More glass use would mean that there would be a push towards people possibly appreciating glass more, and using it as an artistic form.

Also, think about the benefits there are from using glass compared to using plastic. Sure, both are recyclable, but glass is a better process to use. The argument of manufacturing the glass can (and often is) brought up, but lets be honest here, Glass needs high temperatures to be formed and then processed during the cool down period, this either means a bloody hot fire, or use of electricity, to melt the sand particles into a liquid state which then cools to form a solid (duh).

The fire would mean cutting down trees, which we can't have, and the electricity currently would mean using an unsustainable method which includes using a beautiful thing called coal. What if solar panels were used instead to power the engines which melt the sand into glass? It would be the most sustainable method of manufacturing glass, and it would be creating an environmental cycle, where nature works with nature to create a product which is able to be recycled repetitively throughout time.

Still, the monks did make quite a lovely temple.

:)