And no, this isn’t a fairytale – this is the life’s work of Montreal native Robert Bezeau, the aptly named “Plastic King”.

Back in 2012, Robert was living in Isla Colón in Bocas del Toro, Panama, and spending his time with the Bocas Recycling Program, who sought to clean up trash on the country’s beaches and communities.

Yet the Canadian was shocked to find that in the year and a half he was working, they collected an estimate of over one million plastic bottles – which were accumulating in huge piles of recyclable waste.

From this seed, the largest castle made from plastic bottles was built – the four-storey, 46 ft (14 m)-high Castillo Inspiración, fabricated from around 40,000 plastic bottles.

“At first, residents and officials of the island thought I was crazy – even my wife and son did!” said Robert in the 2022 edition of Guinness World Records. “Then they were curious and let me continue to see what I was going to do next. As it grew, so did their intrigue.”

“The challenge was that we had no plans – we improvised day by day,” he said. “It rose one day at a time, one floor at a time, until we had reached four storeys!”

In all, the castle boasts four guest rooms, a feasting area, and a viewing platform on the roof – as well as numerous educational materials for visitors intrigued by his creation and curious about the effects of plastic waste on the planet. 

A few years after he built the castle, Robert received an Energy Globe Award for his sustainable projects, which he said made him “feel incredible.”

Robert also extended his castle to add a massive dungeon, which has a total floor area of 1,500 sq ft (139 sq m) and stands 12 ft (3.7 m) tall.

The dungeon is made from 10,000 plastic bottles, and has six “cells” that can sleep up to 16 guests/prisoners, who would be “repenting” for their plastic waste crimes and pledging to improve their consumption and upcycling habits after they have “served their time” in a plastic prison.

As of 2022, he estimates that the entire village used 200,000 plastic bottles, which significantly helped clean up the local environment.

And for those inspired by Robert’s incredible creation, he offers a few simple words of advice.

“We need to convince our politicians to regulate packaging. How can it be right that we drink water from a PET bottle for eight minutes and discard it in nature for 800 years?” he said.

“If bottles are shaped so that they interlock together, it would allow us to reuse them and build all kinds of structures, useful or decorative, such as benches, tables, fountains, storage boxes, dog houses… the possibilities are endless.”