What do you get when you put 7000 plastic bottles, 60 old sign posts, 350 metres of plastic water piping, 5 sheets of old building site hoarding, 2 old scaffold planks and the sweat of over 180 volunteers together? At first glance, the recycled structure might look like it has a colorful, shingled roof but upon closer inspection, you can see that it's actually made up of thousands of flattened soda and water bottles. The first picture is not that one mentioned, but you get the idea that this process can be made with totally recycled materials. In this climate you would not want to do your entire roof with bottles as it would be too hot in this tropical sun, but the first picture shows you an alternative that provides lighting in your building during the day.

The Fizzy Bottle Project began at the Deen City Farm in Merton Abbey, London and was designed and coordinated by William Waterhouse and Louisa Loakes. The farm collected used soda and water bottles throughout the year and on May 30, 2010, residents of the community of Merton put their muscles to use to turn the bottles into a roof. As you can see, the Fizzy Bottle roof is a little different from other bottle projects we’ve showcased. Instead of being used intact, the bottles were flattened, creating colorful “shingles.” The process of trasnforming the bottles into “tiles” was broken down into 5 easy stages to accommodate all ages of volunteers, of which stage 3, where the bottles were lined up to be squashed by a 2-ton road roller (donated by a very generous local tool hire company) was probably the most fun. Later on, the bottles were de-labelled, hole punched, screwed together and then passed up to builders to be affixed to the roof – just in time for the rain!

Read more: Another option is this process of cutting the bottles and alternating them. I'm just not sure about the method of using staples to hold them together as they would rust away in a short period of time.