Trophy board or actual wall? (Photo credit: bigfoto.com)

Buddhist monks in Thailand have apparently been seeing a lot of green and brown due to their new million-bottle (not baht) temple. It’s an artistic vision, but I have to wonder why they didn’t also make a cork boat while they were at it. Surely they would have had enough material to build a really big Viking ship, or at least a dugout sized to fit the entire monastery at the very least.

It’s worth pointing out that they’re not the only ones who found a way to use bottles constructively.

Homebuilders in the American states of Nevada and Virginia, not to mention the motherland Russia (pictures of the latter dom are here) — if you read it in Pravda it must be true, right? — already thought of using the empties for their own domiciles.

And then there was the Heineken brick bottle. Several decades ago, the man who made Heineken a household name wanted to create a rectangular beer bottle that could be used for bricklaying after its contents had been imbibed. The bottle only had a limited production run though, leaving behind scenarios such as the following that might have been:

Construction worker 1: “Shoot, we don’t have enough brick bottles to finish the south wall on schedule today.”

Construction worker 2: “Well, that’s a shame. How many do you need?”

CW1: “Another couple dozen. Looks like we’ll have to get the crew to drink a few sixpacks over lunch.”

CW2: “It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it or else we won’t finish on time.”

And finally, lest the plastic bottlers feel left out, here’s a fun project for people who want the illusion of a private office in an open floor plan: a clear plastic water bottle wall. While this could be a great team-building project, the walls might also give the impression of trapping officemates in a fishbowl. Just a thought.