The Oklahoma artist used whatever came to hand: aluminium cans, bottles, discarded toys and old bricks.

American artist Richard Delbridge who never wastes anything has spent the last 40 years constructing his own house entirely out of waste material.

An unusual building is located in Oklahoma. It is adorned with mosaics and figures from waste, the owner said that he got the idea to build a dwelling out of garbage in the 1970s.

“I spent the whole first summer digging with a shovel and collecting thousands of aluminium cans and bricks,” Richard told The Mirror.

“I did an original sketch of the underground part of the house with a level dining room and a second floor bedroom.”

It was inspired by Native American homes in New Mexico. For decades, Delbridge has been collecting trash that tourists left behind, picking up various little things from the side of the road. 

“Occasionally I’d find a discarded doll. They looked so forlorn and I thought it was sad that that doll had once meant something to somebody,” the artist said. 

During construction, he also used aluminium bottles and old bricks.

First, Richard designed a building with a dining room and bedroom on the second floor. But over time, he added a bathroom, a second bedroom, a greenhouse, and the third floor with a fire pole running through the house. 

In addition to the unique building material, the house has environmentally-friendly engineering systems – a compostable toilet and special pools for collecting rainwater.

“I’ve made several pools for rainwater which I gather, and I also designed a compostable toilet.

“We’re basically on our own out here so we have our own water well and septic system,” he said.