The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded $25,000 that will go to the construction of benches made of garbage for a park in Tijuana, Mexico.

The agency joined forces with the San Diego Center for Civic Engagement and awarded $45,000 to the non-profit group 4Walls International for the construction of park spaces that will use trash pulled from the Tijuana River Valley as building materials.

One of the parks is in Mexico, the other in the US.

The San Diego Center for Civic Engagement committed $20,000 for the effort on the US side of the border with the EPA providing the $25,000 dedicated to the efforts for the "Los Sauces" park in Tijuana.

"The park will make use of thousands of discarded plastic soda bottles stuffed with trash as fill material for the construction of park benches and other infrastructure," the EPA says. "The trash could otherwise enter the Tijuana River, negatively impacting the fragile ecosystem of the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve in San Diego."

"This innovative project turns a negative into a positive - using the trash itself to create new park space for the local communities," said Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s Regional Administrator for the Pacific Southwest. "This innovative construction technique reduces the cost of raw materials, such as cement, increasing the structures’ strength, while taking trash out of our shared watershed."

The $20,000 from the San Diego Center for Civic Engagement is to fund efforts by the 4Walls group to improve signage, create artistic elements, and install park benches made of trash at Border Field State Park, located 15 miles south of San Diego.