This is Wat Lan Kuad, the Temple of a Million Bottles. And they’re being modest. By now, the temple complex is up to 1.5 million bottles.
The monks responsible for this epic of recycling started gathering bottles on their own and later asked local leaders to add to their stash.
If you start collecting Heineken and Chang beer bottles in 1984, you end up with a lot of bottles. Enough to build a complex of 20 buildings.
The buildings aren’t made just of bottles: They have concrete in them, too. But the monks also make use of the whole bottle: They create decorative mosaics with the leftover bottle caps. The only part they don’t use is the actual beer.
