Four thousand PET bottles became a 24m² house in the interior of São Paulo, as ten students proved that it's possible to build a home from floor to ceiling with recycled plastic, spending 30% less than a brick construction.

Four thousand PET bottles became a 24m² house in the interior of São Paulo, as ten students proved that it’s possible to build a home from floor to ceiling with recycled plastic, spending 30% less than a brick construction.

Written by Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges

Published on 13/06/2026 at 00:20

Updated on 13/06/2026 at 00:21

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The CASA PET project, from FATEC in Presidente Prudente, won the 2013 Instituto 3M Award and in October of that year, built a 24m² house with PET bottles filled with sand and soil cement. It cost R$ 15 thousand. The promise of rooms 20% cooler, however, still depended on temperature measurements.

Four thousand PET bottles turned into a real house in the interior of São Paulo, proof that it is possible to build a home from the ground up with recycled plastic. According to the promotional material from the Ciclovivo portal, ten students from FATEC in Presidente Prudente raised the so-called CASA PET spending 30% less than an equivalent brick construction. The project won the fifth edition of the Instituto 3M Award for University Students in 2013.

According to the project, the 24m² construction, complete with a balcony, was built on the FATEC campus starting in October 2013. Instead of bricks, the team used 4,000 PET bottles filled with washed sand and soil cement, a mixture of earth with 10% cement, from the foundation to the roof. The support columns and structure, however, follow the standard of a masonry house.

How four thousand PET bottles became a real house

Brazilian students build a PET bottle house

The idea of the PET bottle house was born in 2012 and gained momentum the following year. According to the material, the group of ten students from FATEC in Presidente Prudente, accompanied by three professors, entered and won the 2013 fifth edition of the Instituto 3M competition with the CASA PET project. With the victory, the team received R$ 30 thousand to bring the proposal to life within a year, something that student Adriana Roberta Mendonça described as “an even greater challenge”.

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The economy that made the PET bottle house cheaper

Brazilian students build a house from PET bottles
image: Disclosure/3M — Brazilian students build a house from PET bottles
image: *Disclosure/3M*

Besides recycling the packaging, the major advantage pointed out was the economy. According to the material, while a masonry construction of the same measurements, built with bricks, consumes 10 bags of cement, the PET HOUSE needed only four. Adding labor, material, and finishing, with painting and electrical and hydraulic installations, the cost was R$ 15,000, which is 30% less than the same project would cost with traditional materials.

For the coordination, the gain goes beyond the pocket. According to the project, Professor Camila evaluates that the PET HOUSE is important for showing that an ecologically correct construction made from PET bottles is a viable economic alternative, which could be used by low-income people. However, it is a bet to be confirmed on a larger scale, as the work was an award-winning academic experiment.

Thicker walls and the promise of cooler rooms

Another promised advantage of the PET bottle house is thermal comfort. According to the material, the estimate was that the rooms replacing bricks with PET bottles would be 20% cooler. The reason would be the thickness of the walls, 35 cm wide, compared to about 13 cm of a conventional wall.

This number, however, still needed to be proven. According to the project, with the construction completed and delivered, the students began the phase of temperature measurements inside the residence precisely to test this thesis, work that was expected to be completed in the second half of 2015. That is, at the time, the thermal gain was a promising expectation, not a result already measured.

An Award-Winning Project and What It Still Needed to Show

CASA PET was not the only idea propelled by the Instituto 3M Award. According to the material, the initiative had already helped bring several projects to life, such as the Bamboo Project, developed by students from UNESP in Bauru, aimed at training farmers in the bamboo chain to generate income through crafts. The awarding of university students served as a push to put these proposals into practice.

Even so, it’s worth separating the achievement from the promise. CASA PET was a 24m² demonstration house, built on campus and awarded, with attractive numbers in terms of economy and sustainability, but the thermal advantage depended on measurements and the transformation into actual affordable housing remained the goal. Filling 4,000 PET bottles with sand and soil cement is hard work, and the construction still relies on conventional support columns.

The story of CASA PET shows how ten students from FATEC in Presidente Prudente turned 4,000 PET bottles into a real house, 30% cheaper than a brick construction. More than the 2013 Instituto 3M award, the project sparked a discussion on the use of recycled plastic in construction and the possibility of reducing housing costs. The gain in thermal comfort still depended on ongoing measurements at the time, and taking the idea of the demonstration house to the real world remained the next step.

And you, would you live in a house made of PET bottles to save money and reuse plastic? Comment on what you thought of this project by the FATEC students and exchange ideas with other readers about sustainable construction and more affordable housing.

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Four thousand PET bottles became a 24m² house in the interior of São Paulo, as ten students proved that it’s possible to build a home from floor to ceiling with recycled plastic, spending 30% less than a brick construction.

The CASA PET project, from FATEC in Presidente Prudente, won the 2013 Instituto 3M Award and in October of that year, built a 24m² house with PET bottles filled with sand and soil cement. It cost R$ 15 thousand. The promise of rooms 20% cooler, however, still depended on temperature measurements.

How four thousand PET bottles became a real house

The economy that made the PET bottle house cheaper

Thicker walls and the promise of cooler rooms

An Award-Winning Project and What It Still Needed to Show

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Four thousand PET bottles became a 24m² house in the interior of São Paulo, as ten students proved that it’s possible to build a home from floor to ceiling with recycled plastic, spending 30% less than a brick construction.

The CASA PET project, from FATEC in Presidente Prudente, won the 2013 Instituto 3M Award and in October of that year, built a 24m² house with PET bottles filled with sand and soil cement. It cost R$ 15 thousand. The promise of rooms 20% cooler, however, still depended on temperature measurements.

How four thousand PET bottles became a real house

The economy that made the PET bottle house cheaper

Thicker walls and the promise of cooler rooms

An Award-Winning Project and What It Still Needed to Show

Engineers want to carve through Africa with a giant canal to bring water from the world’s second-largest river to a dying lake on the edge of the Sahara Desert that has already lost 90% of its water.

A giant brown band visible from space, approximately 8,850 kilometers long, connected Africa to America in the Atlantic Ocean, and satellites revealed that it is neither land nor pollution, but the largest accumulation of seaweed in the world, which broke records in 2025.

Instead of burning or burying old tires, an American city is transforming about 2,000 of them into the street itself, paving its first sections with a quieter and more durable rubber asphalt.

In just one cast, fishermen are surprised to capture 14,096 mullets in Bombinhas and close a historic season with 58,000 fish; scene recorded in the Santa Catarina paradise marks the last day of the 2026 season.

Using high-resolution satellite images, archaeologists rediscovered the Egyptian city of Imet, buried for centuries in the Nile Delta, revealing rare multi-story houses, granaries, and a sacred road linked to the cobra goddess Wadjet, from about 2,400 years ago.

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