Recycling Innovations: Extreme Upcycling Turns Dumpsters Into Pools!

Upcycling is just a fancy way of saying one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Architect Stefan Beese is one of the premiere upcyclers on the Internet right now, and he’s catching a lot of attention for what he’s doing with dumpsters.

Have you ever stopped and considered how big a dumpster really is? After all, if you’re literally going dumpster diving, you could do a full lap if you wanted to. Beese took an old dumpster, gave it a thorough scrubbing, and after adding a pool lining and building a small deck around it (one would assume with upcycled wood no one wanted). He had a relaxing, backyard pool for a fraction of the cost.

This unique, mobile swimming pool isn’t just a one-off idea, either. Beese is creating something that those who follow his work refer to as Cargotechture. He takes storage media like dumpsters, shipping containers, and similar items, turning them into useful, unusual items like swimming pools, VIP boxes, etc.

While Cargotechture isn’t new by any stretch of the imagination (shipping container homes have been making headlines for years), it is something that’s being embraced more openly than it has in the past. So the next time you’re looking for a home improvement project, this might be something you should put on your list.