According to a number of publications, the brewer came up with a bottle of a special shape - people who do not have access to conventional building materials could build houses from such containers. We have verified the accuracy of such messages.

Author of the publication on the Novate website reportsthat the Heineken concern had developed a specially shaped bottle so that residents of poor countries could use the container as a building material. It is important that such an analogue of bricks was not only very accessible, but also absolutely free, because empty bottles were then thrown away and not sent for recycling. They were often easy to find in public places, such as parks or beaches. Portals also tell this story "The History of Things", "The world is beautiful", Fishki.net and users social networks.

In the early 1960s, Alfred Heineken visited the Caribbean islands. A businessman was struck by empty beer bottles littering local beaches and decided to redesign the packaging his company uses. Heineken thought: the bottles could be made rectangular and used instead of peculiar bricks. Compared to conventional building materials, such a development has noticeable advantages: in particular, glass transmits light better and also retains heat well.

Surprisingly, this story is true, it confirms The Heineken Collection Foundation is a special organization that is engaged preserving the historical heritage of the company. According to her, to implement the idea, the company turned to the architect John Habraken, who developed two projects. Alfred Heineken did not like the first one, but the second one, called WOBO, became successful - in 1964, more than 100,000 of these bottles with a volume of 0.3 l and 0.5 l were produced. Rectangular containers with convex sides easily served as “bricks” held together with cement or other mortar.

However, the idea of “brick” bottles was not fully implemented, having met resistance from Heineken marketers. Experts considered that this would “damage the image” of the company. Nevertheless, at least one building was built from such bottles - Alfred Heineken erected a garden house in his own villa near Amsterdam. Habraken Architectural Bureau discussed building their headquarters out of bottles, but the project was never implemented.

WOBO bottles anticipated the later and world-conquering concept of using recycled materials and were revolutionary in their own way. One of the first copies even exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The museum's website calls the bottle, designed by Harbacken from an idea by Heineken, "a pioneering example of industrial recycling and adaptive reuse of materials."