Reusing waste plastic bottles as an alternative sustainable building material

• 1.5 liter plastic bottles bonded by mortar makes a substitute building material.
• Use of air filled bottles as a building unit showed a slightly higher strength than bottles filled with dry or saturated sand.
• Gross strength of the bottle building blocks is found to be 670 kN/m2 in comparison to concrete blocks which is 3670 kN/m2.
• Air filled bottles can form either a partition in multi-story building, or a bearing wall for single story building.
• Factor of safety of an assumed wall 3 m high, and 300 mm thick, built by air filled bottle blocks, was estimated to be 5.87.

Plastic bottles (PET) are examined both structurally and thermally to be utilized as building units, replacing traditional concrete blocks. Tests were conducted after filling the bottles with either dry sand, saturated sand, or air, bound by cement mortar to produce stable masonry walls of reduced thermal conductivity.The effect of the infill material on the bulk unit weight and the compressive strength of the plastic bottle masonry blocks showed slight effect of the used infill material on the strength. Although the gross strength of these plastic bottles is much less than the traditional blocks, 670 kN/m2 compared to 3670 kN/m2, but calculations showed that the blocks of air filled bottles still can be used as suitable construction units for partition walls or as bearing walls for one roof slab.Thermal wise, air filled bottles showed better thermal insulation than the tradition block construction, which could act as thermal insulation material.