'Wat Pa Maha Chedio Kaew' Bottle Savvy

You don't have to be a SuperForest reader or a member of Greenpeace to agree that recycling really is good for the planet. So since a few decades everyone separates their bottles from their tin cans and their paper boxes from their glass bottles. A group of Thai monks didn't miss out on this message when they built the Wat Pa Maha Chedio Kaew temple a few hundred miles northeast of Bangkok, the capital.

The monks started with the plan to recycle 'a few' glass bottles. At square one the bottles were just used to create some fancy items, visitors liked the result so they donated more bottles. The monks didn't really knew what to do with the bottle-overload so they used it for the construction of the buildings. "So what does it look like then?" I hear you asking.


Like that. Bottles can even be founded in the pillars, and if you look closely you can also spot some bottles in the wall at the back (the one with the window in it). The monks are so fond of the bottle savvy they even use the lids to create mosaics.



Over a period of time the temple got the nickname Wat Lan Kuad what means Temple Of A Million Bottles. This is in fact more than true, to date there are approximately 1,5 million bottles processed in the temple complex. And the number doesn't stop growing, the monks are happy to receive empty glass bottles. The more bottles, the more buildings they can build, right?

-jdh