One Man's Garbage is Another Man's... Hotel?

I really like the idea of making novelties out of recycled goods. I can't resist a good bag made out of juice packets, like this pink one I picked up on eBay that was made in a third world country to help reduce the amount of lunch waste in schools. Or this backpack by TerraCycle I picked up at Wal*Mart for $3:


I've had my eye on this Recycled Seatbelt Purse for awhile now. It was created out of seatbelts from retired airplanes:


I also have a nifty collection of these office containers created out of magazine scraps that I stumbled upon at TJ Maxx on the clearance rack:


So, you can imagine how amazed I was when I stumbled upon the following article. The "Save The Beach Hotel", located in Rome, was opened to the public earlier this month. Check out the story, and the photos, below.

Trash Artist Builds the World’s First Garbage Hotel
By Spooky onJune 9th, 2010

H.A. Schult, the designer behind the famous Trash People, has teamed up with beer-make Corona to create the world’s first hotel made of garbage.

The initiative to build the “Save the Beach” garbage hotel was started by Corona, in order to raise awareness to the huge amount of waste being washed up on our shores, every day. And who better that H.A. Schult, a designer who has used trash as art medium since 1969, to build a hotel out of the trash collected from various European beaches?

The doors of this bizarre hotel, made of garbage, have opened to the public, last week, in Rome and has already received the support of various celebrities, like Helena Christensen, the famous model, who agreed to spend a night in the Save the Beach Hotel.

H.A. Schult, the creator of the trash hotel said “The philosophy of this hotel is to expose the damage we are causing to the sea and the coastline. We live in the era of trash and we are running the risk of becoming trash ourselves. Do we really want this world?”