[Greenbuilding] Beer bottles as modular building materials (was re: Block Wall Insulation)

[Rob Tom]

Corwyn wrote:

> Seen the 'united bottle'?  It is designed to be stacked in construction.

Many moons ago (just slightly after the last dinosaur walked the Earth) in  
architorture school, in a bird course elective (I think that it was called  
"Small Houses" or such-like) one of the weekly assignments was to design a  
beer bottle that could be used as a building material by people in Third  
World locales.

The professor's preamble/story was that Alfred Heineken (the soon-to-be  
heir to the brewing empire) was lounging on the beach on some Carribean  
island and noticed (and was apparently appalled by) the incredible number  
of discarded beer bottles everywhere, more than a few of which bore labels  
with his name printed on them.

He also noticed that most of the shanties that the locals were living in  
were constructed
of whatever discarded materials were readily at hand.

The two observances stewed in his mind as he stewed on the beach and his  
brain cooked up the idea of "beer bottles as modular building units that  
could be used by people in Third World countries" and when he returned  
home to Europe [excuse me] he sent a directive to the brewery's design  
engineers to design such a bottle.

Obviously the idea must have been nixed by Daddy Heineken (or perhaps it  
was the Board of Directors) because the last time I saw a Heiny beer  
bottle it was still the same-old same-old. (I'm not a big beer drinker so  
I may be out of touch with the "latest". Or in this age of  
GoogleEverything, maybe examples of those bottles can be found somewhere  
out there in Cyberia)

On a somewhat related note, (having a vague recollection that Heiny  
bottles might be green-hued) I have memories of something being written  
(also from Dinosaur Days) that green painted absorption plates on solar  
hot water panels were as effective or more effective than black painted  
ones, which according to the writer, didn't surprise him at all since  
Nature chose green as the colour for her solar collectors (leaves).

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Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
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