Before you throw away that empty soda bottle, wine bottle, or milk carton, think about turning it into a bird feeder.

These seven DIY projects show how to reuse common household items to make useful backyard wildlife stations. There’s something for everyone, whether you’re crafting with kids or have experience with tools. Whenever possible, choose glass instead of plastic. Experts say glass bottles last longer in the sun and are easier to clean than plastic.

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1. Soda Bottle Bird Feeder

The soda bottle bird feeder is a classic project that’s easy for anyone to make. Start by saving a 1- or 2-liter soda bottle from the recycling bin. Then, find two wooden spoons, dowels, or sturdy twigs from around your home or yard. These will serve as perches for the birds.

To make one, follow the instructions from Gardening Know How: mark two sets of holes at right angles, insert the spoons or dowels, fill the bottle with birdseed, put the cap back on, and hang it up with string or fishing line. If you’re working with young kids, adults should handle the cutting.

If you prefer not to do DIY from scratch, you can buy soda bottle bird feeder kits. Just attach the tray and wire to your own bottle.

2. Milk Carton Bird Feeder

Making a bird feeder from a milk or juice carton is just as easy as using a soda bottle. The Audubon Society even has a version that’s great for kids. Cut a large opening a few inches from the bottom on one side, add a stick underneath for a perch, make two small holes at the top for hanging, decorate it, and fill with birdseed.

Keep in mind that milk cartons don’t last as long as plastic or glass feeders. Watch for signs of wear and replace your feeder when needed. Remember to recycle the old carton.

3. Tray Bird Feeder

If you have leftover wood from a home project, you can make a simple tray feeder using Birds & Blooms’ instructions. You’ll need cedar or pine scraps, an aluminum screen for drainage, panel nails, eye screws, and some chain for hanging. You should also be comfortable using a drill and hammer.

You can also reuse old windows, picture frames, or other wooden items from around the house to make a tray feeder. One Instructables tutorial shows how someone built a feeder from the wooden backing of an old bronze award.

Tray feeders bring in many types of birds, like cardinals, chickadees, woodpeckers, and mourning doves. However, they don’t keep out squirrels.

4. Floppy Disk Bird Feeder

If you have some old floppy disks lying around, you can turn them into a retro bird feeder using an Instructables guide.

You’ll need to take apart three disks, remove the magnetic film, cut a window for the seeds, put the pieces together to form a cube, and attach a string for hanging. Use tape or a hot glue gun to hold it together, then add birdseed inside.

5. Self-Refilling Glass Bottle Bird Feeder

This gravity-fed feeder is a smart upgrade from basic designs. Remodelaholic’s wine bottle bird feeder tutorial explains how to build a simple wooden platform with a notched holder that keeps an upside-down glass bottle just above the seed tray. As birds eat, gravity refills the tray with more seed.

You need only a recycled wine bottle (or any narrow-neck glass bottle) and some wood for this project. The screw-based mount makes it easy to remove the bottle for refilling. Use a low- or no-VOC wood sealer to protect the frame.

6. Plastic Bottle Hummingbird Feeder

Want to bring hummingbirds to your yard? Try this Instructables guide for making a hummingbird feeder from recycled plastic containers. It uses a pop bottle and a deli container lid, like the ones from grocery store takeout, with milk bottle caps glued on as feeding ports.

Fill the bottle with hummingbird nectar. The International Hummingbird Society suggests mixing one part white sugar with four parts water. Don’t use food coloring, honey, or artificial sweeteners. The red parts of the feeder attract the birds, not the nectar itself.

If you want something sturdier and easier to clean, Birds & Blooms offers instructions for a glass bottle hummingbird feeder that uses copper wire and a commercial feeding tube. This version takes more effort to make but lasts much longer.

7. Glass Soda Bottle Bird Feeder 

This is a step up in craft and durability, and a good reason to save that glass Jarritos or Mexican Coke bottle. Birds & Blooms’ glass soda bottle feeder tutorial pairs a recycled glass bottle with a chicken feeder base for a sturdy feeder that holds plenty of seed and will last for years.

The most involved step is drilling a hole in the bottle’s bottom using a diamond drill bit under running water to keep the bit cool so the glass doesn’t crack. A steel rod threads through the bottle and into the chicken feeder base, locked in place with a washer and wing nut; a G-hook at the top completes the hanger. To refill, simply unscrew the base, add seed, and reattach.

This DIY project requires comfort with a drill and patience with glass, but the result looks intentional and well-made, not like a weekend craft project. For the nectar-recipe and feeder-cleaning guidance that applies to all glass bottle builds, the International Hummingbird Society’s feeding page and Birds & Blooms’ black oil sunflower seed guide are solid references depending on what you’re trying to attract.

To find out where to recycle glass bottles in your area, check the Earth911 Recycling Directory. Most curbside programs don’t accept them, but many drop-off sites do.

Tips for Bird Feeders

• Clean your feeders every one or two weeks to stop mold and bacteria from harming birds.
• Hang feeders at least five feet above the ground and away from bushes where cats might hide.
• Black oil sunflower seeds attract the most types of birds.
• For hummingbird feeders, change the nectar every two or three days. In hot weather, change it even more often.
• Plastic feeders break down faster than glass ones in sunlight. Check them regularly and replace when needed.

Related on Earth911

• How to Start a Container Garden
• How to Compost at Home
• The Dos and Don’ts of Glass Recycling

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in 2014, and was most recently updated in March 2026.

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The global energy system is changing in two big ways: it is moving from centralized fossil-fuel generation to distributed renewables, and it is becoming more digital in how energy is measured, traded, and optimized. Steve Wilhite, Executive Vice President of Advisory Services at Schneider Electric, works at the intersection of these complementary yet challenging transitions. Schneider supports more than 40% of the Fortune 500 with energy procurement and sustainability strategies, managing over $50 billion in annual energy spending. His experience shows something that pledges and press releases often miss: the biggest challenge for corporate sustainability is not money, technology, or political will. The real issue is the gap between ambition and the ability to deliver. Companies are making Science-Based Targets commitments faster than they are building the infrastructure to meet them. Scope one and two emissions are being managed better, but scope three emissions, which come from a company’s supply chain, still present a systems problem that no single company can solve alone. Schneider’s zero-carbon supplier program suggests what it takes to close this gap. When the company started its own effort to cut emissions from its top 1,000 suppliers by 50% in five years, all 1,000 signed up within two weeks. However, about 84% of them did not fully understand what they had agreed to. Achieving success meant creating measurement tools, education programs, and action plans to help the whole ecosystem, not just individual companies.

This critical conversation explores how renewable energy is bought, including the difference between physical and virtual power purchase agreements. Steve also explains why the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) market became more complex as it grew, and why 10% fewer renewable deals closed in 2025 compared to 2024, as tech companies used up available clean energy. He also addresses a key question in clean energy: is AI helping the environment overall, or do its energy needs still outweigh its efficiency benefits? Schneider processes over a million energy invoices each month, and about 50,000 of them had issues that took 10 to 15 business days to resolve. Now, a team of AI systems can handle these in seconds. Accurate energy consumption and billing data directly affect emissions reporting, energy efficiency, and money-saving market decisions. He describes Schnieder’s approach as “frugal AI”: using the right-sized models for each task, running them on clean energy, and choosing simple solutions over complex ones. Looking ahead, electrification is building a global digital energy network in which every meter and adjustment contributes to a new system independent of central plants. As intelligence spreads, power can shift to consumers, communities, and businesses. Schneider is enabling this shift by building a mesh grid in which each point both produces and consumes energy, coordinated by AI. These changes fundamentally reshape the global energy landscape. The central question: will we intentionally build this new, distributed system, or will we repeat centralized patterns digitally?

To learn more about Schneider Electric’s sustainability efforts, visit se.com.

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Interview Transcript

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Nevada just shattered its March statewide high temperature record by 6 degrees, which is a ‘72 miles per hour in a school zone’ kind of margin. And it happened during the hottest 11-year stretch in 176 years of recorded temperature tracking.

A mid-March heat wave in the American West pushed temperatures in Laughlin, Nevada, to 106°F, far above the previous March record of 100°F. The fact that this happened in March is alarming, especially since it coincided with a near-total collapse of the region’s snowpack. This sets the stage for an early and possibly severe wildfire season. The heat also fits a troubling trend confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization last week: 2015 through 2025 have been the 11 warmest years ever recorded on Earth.

Usually, temperature records are broken by small amounts. What happened in Nevada last month was very different. Some places broke monthly high temperature records by as much as 8 degrees. Reno had seven days above 80°F in March, compared to the previous record of just two days. “It’s not just that we broke monthly records,” said Nevada State Climatologist Baker Perry, “but it’s by how much we broke the monthly records, and not just in one place.”

A Snow Drought That Wasn’t in the Forecast

The heat wave didn’t hit a typical winter landscape. Nevada was already experiencing what Perry calls an unprecedented snow drought. Even though winter precipitation was close to normal and there were big storms in mid-February, warm, moist air arrived soon after. This caused what the National Weather Service called the second-highest single-day snowmelt ever recorded in the eastern Sierra, only surpassed by flooding in 1997.

Normally, snow melts slowly through April and May, but this year it happened all at once in late February and early March. SNOTEL monitoring stations across Nevada show the impact clearly: 70% of sites in northern and central Nevada now report zero inches of snowpack. That’s not just low—it’s gone. The incidence of drought is closely correlated with rising atmospheric CO2 levels recorded at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which is threatened with defunding by the Trump Administration.

What worries scientists most is the combination of these events. “To have these two unprecedented, exceptional events happening at once is a combination that is particularly concerning,” Perry said.

What This Means for Fire Season

Wildfire risk isn’t only about heat. It depends on the sequence of conditions leading up to fire season, and this year’s setup is especially dangerous.

The snowmelt and early rains caused plants to grow weeks ahead of schedule. This early growth creates lots of fine fuels. As these plants dry out over the spring—now with less moisture from snowpack—they become the kindling that can fuel fast-moving fires.

Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District Division Chief August Isernhagen said the early green-up could lead to conditions we haven’t seen before as fire season approaches. He urged people to be even more careful than in recent drought years.

“The majority of our starts, and nearly all of our catastrophic fires are human caused,” Isernhagen said in a statement from the University of Nevada, Reno.

Mountain forests face another challenge. Dawn Johnson, Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the NWS in Reno, explained that losing snowpack this early means heavy timber can become drought-stressed much sooner than usual, turning it into a fire hazard months earlier than normal. A cooler storm pattern expected in early April might bring some relief, but experts warn it may be too little, too late to make a real difference.

Eleven Years. No Exceptions.

The Nevada heat wave wasn’t an isolated event. It happened during the longest stretch of global heat ever recorded.

The WMO’s State of the Global Climate 2025 report, released on March 23, confirmed that every year from 2015 to 2025 is among the hottest ever recorded. Depending on the data, 2025 was either the second- or third-warmest year since records began, with temperatures about 1.43°C above pre-industrial levels. Atmospheric CO₂ reached its highest level in 2 million years, and ocean temperatures set a new record for the ninth year in a row.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres put the streak in stark terms: “When history repeats itself eleven times, it is no longer a coincidence. It is a call to act.”

The report also introduced a new measure called Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI). This tracks the difference between the energy the planet receives from the sun and the energy it sends back into space. In 2025, EEI was at its highest since records began in 1960. Surface temperatures, which get most of the attention, only show about 1% of the planet’s extra heat. Over 91% is absorbed by the oceans, which have taken in the equivalent of about 18 times the world’s total annual energy use each year for the past 20 years. EEI gives a clearer picture, showing that the planet is becoming more out of balance.

“In 2025, heatwaves, wildfires, drought, tropical cyclones, storms and flooding caused thousands of deaths, impacted millions of people and caused billions in economic losses,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. She added that the changes driven by human activities “will have harmful repercussions for hundreds — and potentially thousands — of years.”

What’s happening in the Western U.S. matches the WMO’s global findings perfectly. The report highlighted major glacier loss in 2025 along North America’s Pacific coast. These events aren’t separate—they’re both signs of the same warming trend, just showing up in different ways and times.

“We seem to be entering this new era where temperatures will be significantly higher than what they were ten years ago,” said climate scientist Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick of Australian National University. She explained that the changes of the past three years can only be explained by climate change.

What About the Cold in the East?

This is where things get both surprising and important.

If you live in the Northeast, Midwest, or Southeast, 2025 might not seem like a record-warm year. Some parts of the eastern U.S. have had cold snaps and severe winter weather that made national news. So how does that fit with 11 straight years of record global heat?

This actually makes sense in climate science. Climate change doesn’t warm every place at the same time. Instead, it disrupts atmospheric patterns like the polar vortex, which usually keeps cold air over the Arctic. As the Arctic warms much faster than the rest of the planet—about four times the global average, according to NOAA—the polar vortex weakens and shifts, letting cold air move into areas that don’t usually get it.

In other words, the same forces causing record heat in Nevada are also behind the unusual cold in the eastern U.S. These aren’t opposites—they’re both results of a destabilized climate system. Weather feels local, but our climate is shared. When the West is hot in March and the East is cold, both are signs of the same disrupted system.

What You Can Do

• If you live in the West, check current wildfire risk conditions through the National Interagency Fire Center and understand your local evacuation routes and readiness steps before fire season peaks.
• Lower the risk of starting fires. Most wildfires are caused by people, so be extra careful during high-risk times. Don’t have campfires during bans, avoid dragging chains on your vehicle or trailer, and make sure your equipment doesn’t create sparks.
• Support climate policy at both the state and federal levels. Reach out to your Congressional representatives. The WMO data shows the trend is clear. The decisions we make now will shape how severe fire seasons are in the future.
• Cut your home’s carbon footprint by using energy efficiently, choosing cleaner transportation, and making changes to your diet. One person’s actions won’t solve the global problem, but when many people make changes, it can have a real impact on emissions.
• If you live in the eastern U.S., don’t let cold winters make you ignore climate data. Pay attention to what’s happening across the country—the same atmosphere connects us all.

Related Reading on Earth911

How to Prepare Your Home for Wildfire Season

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