{"id":14525,"date":"2026-08-20T11:43:43","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T11:43:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/?p=14525"},"modified":"2026-08-20T11:43:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T11:43:43","slug":"in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-8000-glass-bottles-had-become-the-walls-of-their-seven-bedroom-home-that-glows-during-sunrise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/?p=14525","title":{"rendered":"In 2020, a Brazilian mother and daughter began collecting discarded bottles; years later, more than 8,000 glass bottles had become the walls of their seven-bedroom home that glows during sunrise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"e9jwa\">\n<div class=\"vdo_embedd\">\n<div class=\"GfdvZ\">\n<section class=\"_bIDB  clearfix id-r-component leadmedia undefined undefined  E9tg9 \" style=\"top:0px\">\n<div class=\"_bIDB\" data-ua-type=\"1\" onclick=\"stpPgtnAndPrvntDefault(event)\">\n<div class=\"ypVvZ\">\n<div class=\"WGttI\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/thumb\/msid-133371883,imgsize-141907,width-400,height-225,resizemode-4\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-8000-glass-bottles-had-become-the-walls-of-their-seven-bedroom-home-that-glows-during-sunrise.jpg\" alt=\"In 2020, a Brazilian mother and daughter began collecting discarded bottles; years later, more than 8,000 glass bottles had become the walls of their seven-bedroom home that glows during sunrise\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>When people go on a trip, they make sure to carry back a suitcase full of memories. From photos to souvenirs, they invest in numerous things to ensure that they have something to remember the good times by.<!-- --> But one thing they always end up forgetting is to carry back the waste and deposit it correctly in the dustbins. From bottles to food wrappers, numerous pieces of evidence of human adventure collect on beaches and in forests for years, until they are all you can see on the land.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"3\"\/>On the Brazilian island of Itamaraca, one house is making a simple question that is hard to ignore. The waste tourists leave behind on a beach can either accumulate on the sand for years, or become useful in the wall or roof of a home. <!-- -->This is a step Edna Dantas and her daughter Maria Gabreilly Dantas took.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"8\"\/>The mother-daughter duo created Casa de Sal (The Salt House), a seven-room dwelling with the help of recycled wood, pallets, toothpaste tubes, and yes, more than 8,000 glass bottles. The home is located in Pernambuco, where beaches, biodiversity, rising tourism, and discarded waste paint a contrasting but realistic picture.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"10\"\/><\/p>\n<p><h2>A beach problem, a home solution<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<div data-pos=\"0\" class=\"id-r-component iIpbx undefined  &#10;        \">\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A beach problem, a home solution&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;\" msid=\"133371957\" imgsize=\"183815\" resizemode=\"4\" width=\"\" title=\"For their home, they assembled the bottles into glass walls, recycled pallets for partitions and made the roofing from toothpaste tubes. \" placeholdersrc=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/photo\/83033472.cms\" offsetvertical=\"0\" placeholdermsid=\"47529300\" type=\"thumb\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/photo\/imgsize-183815,msid-133371957\/a-beach-problem-a-home-solutionbrbr.jpg\" data-api-prerender=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p>For their home, they assembled the bottles into glass walls, recycled pallets for partitions and made the roofing from toothpaste tubes. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"13\"\/>During the problem, Edna observed the bottles piling up near the shore and decided to try something that sounded almost impossible. She wanted to build a home with glass bottles, not as decorations but as a part of the structure. The 55-year-old is a socio-environmental educator while her 27-year-old daughter works in sustainable fashion. It took them two years to collect all the materials and together, they turned a family habit of reuse into a construction project.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"17\"\/>For their home, they assembled the bottles into glass walls, recycled pallets for partitions and made the roofing from toothpaste tubes. <!-- -->The first finished room was about 215 square feet and served as a sewing workshop while the rest of the home slowly took shape.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"21\"\/>\u201cThe first year and a half was pure ingenuity: no conventional bathroom, washing dishes in a basin. But we never lost sight of our vision,\u201d Maria told Diario AS.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"23\"\/>According to Good Good Good, the two have collected more than 13,000 bottles since the beginning of the project and used about 8,000 in their home. <!-- -->The result is bright not only for a sustainable future, but also in appearance. As the sunlight passes through the bottles, the house shines bright with its purpose, reminding visitors that beauty often comes from the most surprising of places.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"27\"\/>The project not only shone light on environmental conservation but also patriarchal notions. Maria said workers brought in for specific tasks often wanted to correct them and not just help them. <!-- -->\u201cAs if we lacked capacity,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople think that one day we found a magic bottle with a genie inside,\u201d Maria told Black Enterprise. \u201cThey don\u2019t realise this requires skill, management, vision. And being a woman in this environment is doubly hard.<!-- -->\u201d Construction is still often treated as male territory, especially when the builders are women leading an unconventional project. That is why the phrase \u201cit has our signature\u201d matters.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"33\"\/><\/p>\n<p><h2>Why glass matters<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<div data-pos=\"0\" class=\"id-r-component iIpbx undefined  &#10;        \">\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"An experiential Airbnb\" msid=\"133372019\" imgsize=\"174121\" resizemode=\"4\" width=\"\" title=\"Edna grew up in a family that reused materials out of necessity and passed down their innate creativity onto her.\" placeholdersrc=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/photo\/83033472.cms\" offsetvertical=\"0\" placeholdermsid=\"47529300\" type=\"thumb\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/photo\/imgsize-174121,msid-133372019\/an-experiential-airbnb.jpg\" data-api-prerender=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Edna grew up in a family that reused materials out of necessity and passed down their innate creativity onto her.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"36\"\/>Glass sounds clean since it can be recycled again and again. But that does not help much when bottles are abandoned in mangroves, streets and beaches, without reaching the factories where they can be recycled. It is heavy, easy to discard, and often unattractive for informal collectors when the return is low.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"38\"\/>\u201cThese bottles are not going to disappear. Without policies to regulate their production or penalise abandonment, the least we can do is find ways to reuse them,\u201d Edna told Black Enterprise. <!-- -->\u201cIf you throw a bottle away and it doesn\u2019t break, it\u2019ll still be there in a year.\u201d If bottles are sold in tourist towns, someone has to plan what happens after they have served their purpose. For coastal communities, this is not an abstract environmental issue.<!-- --> It is the broken glass near the sand, the trash after a crowded weekend, and the extra cleanup that often falls on residents.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"43\"\/>Moreover, Brazil&#8217;s housing deficit was estimated at 5,773,983 homes in 2024, representing 7.4 per cent of occupied private households, according to the Ministry of Cities, citing data from Funda\u00e7\u00e3o Jo\u00e3o Pinheiro. <!-- -->That means Casa de Sal sits in the middle of two pressures at once. The country needs more decent housing, while local communities are also being asked to absorb the cost of waste. In a social media post, Edna shared an alarming statistic that claims it can take up to seven generations, 184 years, for Black women in Brazil to buy a house of their own.<!-- --> Edna cites \u201cenvironmental racism\u201d as the catalyst for this project, one she hopes can provide repair and healing for everyone in her community.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"49\"\/>Edna grew up in a family that reused materials out of necessity and passed down their innate creativity onto her. \u201cMy childhood was marked by creativity,\u201d she told Globo. \u201cI made my own bamboo toys, recycled whatever I could. We didn\u2019t know it was environmental activism, it was just how we survived.\u201d<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"52\"\/>Indigenous to the Quilombola, an Afro-Brazilian people who are descendants of Africans who escaped slavery and started their own settlements in Brazil, the Dantas women see it as their responsibility to respect nature, with roots both in African and Indigenous cultures.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"55\"\/>Now, the Salt House is listed as a destination on <a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/topic\/airbnb\" styleobj=\"[object Object]\" class=\"\" commonstate=\"[object Object]\" frmappuse=\"1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Airbnb<\/a>, and the duo hosts workshops to teach others in their community what they learned about this sustainable building method. They also now have an upcycled accessory brand, hand-sewing tote bags with other found materials.<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/world\/us\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-8000-glass-bottles-had-become-the-walls-of-their-seven-bedroom-home-that-glows-during-sunrise\/articleshow\/133371813.cms\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When people go on a trip, they make sure to carry back a suitcase full of memories. From photos to souvenirs, they invest in numerous things to ensure that they have something to remember the good times by. But one thing they always end up forgetting is to carry back the waste and deposit it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-31"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-800-150x150.avif","medium":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-800-300x169.avif","medium_large":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-800.avif","large":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-800.avif","1536x1536":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-800.avif","2048x2048":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-800.avif","blogsy-small":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-800.avif","blogsy-small-tall":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-800.avif","blogsy-small-square":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-800.avif","blogsy-small-masonry":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-800.avif","blogsy-medium":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-800.avif","blogsy-medium-masonry":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-800.avif","blogsy-large":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-800.avif","blogsy-wide":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/in-2020-a-brazilian-mother-and-daughter-began-collecting-discarded-bottles-years-later-more-than-800.avif"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8709732a479614e7a8aa24d3eb1b239f30dc6d90c61464ed495001e7a469d856?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"When people go on a trip, they make sure to carry back a suitcase full of memories. 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