In 1963, the Heineken World Bottle, the“brick that holds beer”, was created after Mr. Heineken visited the Caribbean. He saw two problems: beaches littered with bottles and a lack of affordable building materials. The solution: beer bottle bricks!
Source: Frost Fire Zoo
Check out the Thai Buddhist temple made from one million recycled beer bottles!
When is this great idea coming to Canada? We get charged a deposit fee that we get back when we return the bottle, but I like this idea better! If all beer bottles sold in Canada were the same size and shape, we would be a well housed bunch of drunks anyway!
These people will by definition live in glass houses…..
What a brilliant idea.
With glass recycling reaching new lows this would be an excellent way to encourage re-use of the material.
Neat idea, but wouldn’t it get awfully hot? It would be like living in an aquarium.
Isa,
You could fill each bottle with sand. It would be very highly insulating.
Awesome. Fill most of them with sand and leave some empty for “windows” to let in natural light. They need to bring this concept back.
filling them with sand would work as a thermal mass, helping to regulate the temperature in the home. Used correctly with sun angles and external or internal insulation, it could be made very efficient.
No throwing stones?
What a great idea! Fill them with shredded newspaper or sand or shredded styrofoam for both insulation and to lessen the landfill! Consider all the colorful possibilites. We need affordable housing–it presents itself here!
If more companies thought in this visionary way, we could change the face of poverty planetwide. I would love getting 2 uses out of my beer.
People are building houses called earthships the walls are built out of old tires packed with earth and inside walls are made of all types of bottles and cans then covered with earth……. very cool check em out
This is a great idea. More companies should think along these lines.
this would only work on a beach where the purpose would be to keep cool.
Hell, with the way life goes, I’d be up for drinking my way to a new home!
very intelligent,they may make exellent pasive solar colletors. A wall of glass faceing south,an air gap with black pvc pipe against a wall of brick or stone and
preheat water and have night time heat or vent the excess to draw cooler air into the stucture.If brewers could be talked into a percentage of their output into s standard size brick it might catch on.
and think of the college student housing possibilities!
that is an excellent idea!
Just somehow my mind thinks it’s funny cos …hahahaha
Mann Oh Man..Its spooky how wonderful this idea is.
That’s probably why noone is doing it..It’s too sensible.
In short, like the idea but more details are needed to know if it is “green” or not.
I suspect walls constructed this way could be a bit dangerous. Very thin hollow brittle blocks which are not fused together aren’t ideal building materials (even if they are strong individually). Their structural failure would be very “dramatic” for the occupants.
Plus it might not be as totally green as it appears. Round bottles allow the the practical minimal amount of glass to be used and make production easy/efficient. Nestable cuboid bottles would require significantly more energy to produce.
I wrote a constructive but negative comment previously and it failed moderation. A bit worrying that, hopefully is was my mistake.
Anyway this is not as green as it first appears. Firstly present bottle are their shape as a compromise of capacity, packing and crucially energy/cost to made. If, as is very likely, the nestable cuboid bottles take more energy to made the green-ness is questionable.
Secondly glass is very strong but not at all tough. I am the scientific definition of tough which is ability to prevent crack propagation (so putty is tough). Hollow brittle materials that are not fused are not an ideal structural material. This would be so bad were it not for the danger associated in a glass structure.
actually according to Mr. Demetri Martin, it is ONLY people who live in glass houses that should throw rocks. Since you never know their position, what if theyre trapped? How do they get out? THROW ROCKS! lololol
What happens during a hurricane?