Beer Packaging for Today’s Sustainable World – WOBO

Imagine a house made from used glass bottles. It’s a vision that Heineken have had to reduce waste and provide a cheap building material for impoverished countries.

In our time of sustainable living and corporate responsibility you would think it was a vision for today’s world but the Heineken World Bottle (WOBO) was created in the 1960s.

It’s inception came about after a visit to the Caribbean by Alfred Heineken in 1960. Moved by the impoverished communities’ lack of housing and disturbed by the large amount of litter he witnessed he decided to find a solution.

Three years and several designs later Heineken’s work with architect John Habraken resulted in the WOBO – the first ever packaging designed specifically for use as a building material. Designed in two sizes, 350ml and 500ml, it was intended to lay the bottle horizontally and fill the gaps with a cement mortar mixed with silicone.

Unfortunately the bottle was never mass produced and today just a couple of prototype structures have survived – a shed on the Heineken estate and a wall at the Heineken Museum in Amsterdam.

Posted 5 February 2016