Heineken's 50,000 bottle-bricks in 1963 built a house in 1965, then hit a wall

In 1963, Heineken produced 50,000 rectangular bottles designed to work as both beer containers and building bricks. The idea came from Alfred Heineken, who wanted the bottles to serve a second purpose after the beer had been consumed. Two years later, a prototype glass house was built using the unusual bottles, but the concept never reached the market because of technical and commercial problems.According to Smithsonian Magazine, the idea began with a trip to the Caribbean island of Curacao in 1960. Alfred Heineken noticed that Heineken bottles were scattered across the beaches. At the time, bottles were commonly returned to breweries for refilling and could make around 30 trips between consumers and breweries. But Curacao did not have enough infrastructure to collect and reuse all the bottles.At the same time, Heineken saw another problem. Some of the impoverished communities he visited had limited access to proper building materials.