The Heineken World Bottle was designed with multiple functions. Image courtesy of hyperexperience.comIf we really want to be sustainable when it comes to our brew, we will consider the package. Let's take a look beyond recycling into the future and back to the past of the bottle.

Zero waste designers tell us that the function of an object is more valuable than the materials. The function of a bottle is as a container for liquid.

In the recycling process the function is lost as the bottle is broken. The glass has to be sorted and melted down and remade again, using energy and material resources.

Around 1960, before recycling came on the scene, Alfred Heineken saw the problem with single use beverage containers. As a solution, he commissioned the design of a bottle with a secondary function, one that would serve after it had served as a single-use container.

The World Bottle (WOBO) was the inspiration of inadequate housing and abundant trash, including his discarded beer bottles, that Heineken saw on an overseas island, presumably Dutch Curacao.

Strauss Milk : is sold in glass bottles. A deposit and return system keeps these bottles in circulation. Why not for beer?If he was surprised by the bottle waste, we can assume things were different at home. Was there a deposit and return program in place in 1960's Netherlands? Probably. There is still a deposit and return system for milk bottles, like Strauss.

Heineken designed a bottle that was flat on two sides, for stacking. The WOBO also had a recessed bottom, in which the mouth of another bottle would fit. Not only would this bottle serve as a single-use beverage container, it could be used as a building block for a house or other structure.

In one simple design decision, Heineken, saw a solution to excessive waste and inadequate building materials. What was once the waste of consumer beer drinking, was now the material input for low-income island housing.

Nothing short of brilliant, the WOBO never made it beyond the factory.

The bottle wall is nothing new, but the World Bottle, was designed specifically to make walls. It was an example of the Cradle to Cradle design ahead of its time. If the World Bottle were reintroduced today, would it survive?