From Smithsonian Magazine's Food and Think blog:
There are plenty of examples of structures built from recycled materials—even Buddhist temples have been made from them. In Sima Valley, California, an entire village known as Grandma Prisbey’s Bottle Village was
constructed from reused glass. But this is no new concept—back in 1960,
executives at the Heineken brewery drew up a plan for a “brick that
holds beer,” a rectangular beer bottle that could also be used to build
homes.
Gerard Adriaan Heineken acquired the “Haystack” brewery in 1864 in Amsterdam, marking the formal beginning of the eponymous brand that is now one of the most successful international breweries. Since the first beer consignment was delivered to the United States upon the repeal of Prohibition
in 1933, it has been a top seller in the United States. The
distinctive, bright green of a Heineken beer bottle can be found in more
than 70 countries today.
The founder’s grandson, Alfred
Heineken, began his career with the company in 1942 and was later
elected Chairman of the Executive Board at Heineken International. Alfred, better known as “Freddy,”oversaw the design of the classic red-starred label released in 1964. He had a good eye for marketing and design.”Had I not been a beer brewer I would have become an advertising man,” he once said.
When Freddy’s beer took off in the international market, he made it a
point to visit the plants the company had opened as a part of its
globalization strategy.
A display of WOBO “bricks” from the Heineken Experience, in Amsterdam. Image courtesy of Flickr user seaotter22.
In 1960, Freddy took a trip to the island of Curacao in
the Caribbean Sea and discovered that he could barely walk 15 feet on
the beach without stepping on a littered Heineken bottle. He was alarmed
by two things: First, the incredible amount of waste that his product
was creating due to the region’s lack of infrastructure to collect the
bottles for reuse. (Back then, bottles were commonly returned for refilling,
lasting about 30 trips back and forth to the breweries). Second, the
dearth of proper building materials available to those living in the
impoverished communities he visited. So he thought up an idea that might
solve both of these problems: A brick that holds beer.
The rectangular, Heineken World Bottle or WOBO, designed with the help of architect John Habraken,
would serve as a drinking vessel as well as a brick once the contents
were consumed. The long side of the bottle would have interlocking
grooved surfaces so that the glass bricks, once laid on their side,
could be stacked easily with mortar or cement. A 10-foot-by-10-foot
shack would take approximately 1,000 bottles (and a lot of beer
consumption) to build. Yu Ren Guang explains in Packaging Prototypes 3: Thinking Green:
“On returning to Holland [from Curacao], Alfred set about
conceiving the first ever bottle designed specifically for secondary
use as a building component, thereby turning the function of packaging
on its head. By this philosophy, Alfred Heineken saw his beer as a
useful product to fill a brick with while being shipped overseas. It
became more a case of redesigning the brick than the bottle.”
