An architect figured out a brilliant way to reuse thousands of empty beer bottles

Next time you're about to dump beer bottles in the recycling bin, consider that they could be used to make a house instead.

Armed with $11,000 and 8,500 discarded beer bottles, Chinese architect Li Rongjun spent over four months using bottles to build the second floor of his two-story house in Chongqing, China, according to Chinese media.

At least 40 layers of beer bottles hold the top level together. The ground floor, on the other hand, is built with mud and brick. The entire house spans 312 square feet, with each floor rising nine feet high.

Li plans to use the beer bottle section of his home as an office.

But he might want to be careful. One architect told China Daily that the structure is at risk of collapsing since the top level "has no load bearing wall and the weight the beer bottles could carry is limited."

The idea of turning beer bottles into building material isn't new. In the 1960s, Dutch brewing giant Heineken made beer bottles look like bricks so that they could be used for affordable housing later. The World Bottles - or WOBO, as they were called - could interlock with each other when laid horizontally. But the concept was dismissed as being too impractical.

Given Li's creation, imagining beer bottles as glass bricks doesn't seem like such a far-fetched idea - as long as the house doesn't collapse, that is.