In October 2009, volunteers from the non-profit Hug It Forward travelled to Guatemala to help the community of Granados, a remote mountain town, build a "Bottle School" from waste plastic trash.  We worked closely with the community to clean up plastic bottles and inorganic trash around the town – and then used this trash to construct the walls of the new building. The revolutionary technology enabled us to build a school much more cheaply than using the cinderblocks that are usual in Central America, as well as helping to clean up the local environment. Read more about this project at