Recycling is taking an object, like a plastic bottle, and after you drink it, turning it into a candleholder

MOST things in the lives of Alejandro D'Acosta and Claudia Turrent are recycled: the trailer in which the architects live, their three-year-old Christmas tree.

"The only thing not redclada is my wife," D'Acosta says with a grin, his wedding-ring finger tattooed with her name.

"Ay, gordo! What am I going to do with you?" Turrent admonishes him, laughing, her right wrist imprinted with his name like a bracelet. The couple show their good humour, but make no mistake: they are on a serious quest to promote a sustainable way of life for themselves and their community in the nascent revoludon verde just south of the Tijuana border in Mexico.

The Ensenada coast and nearby Valle de Guadalupe wine-making region inland are testing grounds for the couple's experiments in recycling and "upcycling", the process of designing a product with its end-life in mind.

"Recycling is taking an object, like a plastic bottle, and after you drink it, turning it into a candleholder," Turrent says. "We want companies designing the plastic bottle to design it in the shape of something functional, like a roof tile." Instead of ending up in a landfill, she says, the plastic could be incorporated into an inter- locking System of bottles that provide cover. "This would help many poor people have a shelter over their heads,and at the same time, the Earth will be cleaner."