When you’re free-associating about Buddhist monks, beer probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But the religious men linked to Thailand’s Wat Pa Maha Kaew Temple—nicknamed Temple of a Million Bottles—take recycling seriously. They reused 1.5 million of the green and brown alcohol containers to create their place to pray.
By recycling, not tossing, that many bottles, the monks undeniably and deliberately aided the environment. (Recycling reduces emissions that contribute to climate change and affect the weather, according to the EPA.) Plus, they bucked their country’s national garbage-disposal trends. In Thailand in 2009, recycling rates for the country hovered around 22 percent, Waste Management World reports; in the United States that year, we recycled about 34 percent of what we threw away.
The monks’ beer-bottle temple also improved surrounding conditions, according to GreenUpgrader. “Using Heineken bottles (green) and Chang Beer bottles (brown), the monks were able to clean up the local pollution,” the blog writes, “and create a useful structure that will be a visual reminder to the scope of pollution and the potential we can make with limber minds.”
The monks began collecting the bottles in the early 1980s, The Telegraph reports. They pulled together so many that in addition to the temple, they made a 20-building complex that includes, among other things, bathrooms, bungalows, and a water tower, plus used the bottle caps for mosaics.
Despite the unique structure—all temple buildings are entirely or partially made from bottles—“the temple is [still] a place of worship and quietude,” writes Charles Rahm of the blog Don’t Worry Just Travel and who visited the site in southeast Thailand. It “calls for the same seriousness and composure as any other temple in Thailand.”