99 Bottles of Wine on the Wall

I just love this story out of Australia. Apparently a winery there has discovered that wine bottles filled with water are a pretty good insulator, and they have incorporated wine bottles into the walls of a building as part of a study.


It's not the first time recycled wine bottles have been used as a building material, but the Australian government sees enough merit in the project to award the winery a $20,555 grant to study its effectiveness.

I showed this story to my wife, who has been in the recycling field for more than 15 years, and she was understandably excited by the novelty of it. She's always collecting offbeat stories about the innovative ways people have learned to recycle.

Personally, I suspect she's intrigued by more than just the thought of a recycling breakthrough. You see, she's always been a bit nervous about what the neighbors might be saying about all those wine bottles in our recycling pails. Anything that might prevent our wine bottles from winding up on display at the curbside would really make her day.

But I've never worried about any of this, though I admit that after a winetasting weekend with friends we often have quite a few spent bottles to dispose of. Buying an extra recycling bucket solved that problem, from my perspective. I think we'll stick with fiber glass insulation in the walls for now. As for the neighbors, they're probably just jealous anyway.