h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Heineken World Bottle - A Brick That Holds Beer - A59465064
Author: Malabarista - of course the ant is right, but the grasshopper is still cooler! - U1528154

Not a Germany-centric one for a change.

This one's mostly about beer, but primarily it's about architecture, but first and foremost, it's about recycling

well written and interesting

Ooo I never... I'd like to live in a house made from beer bottles well so long as I got to drink the contents of them all first
Entertaining, informatitive and well written... couldn't spot any mistakes or anything

Love it. Panders to my twin passions of glass and being green (within reason). (Do we need a new smiley?)

Excellent. What a great idea. Who'd-a thunk it?

I think it's 'ramshackle huts'.

Fascinating article Mala. Well done and

Websailor

Thanks, all. Don't sample too much of the beer before you've gone and found all the things I need to change!

Ah, yes, ramshackle, of course. Thanks, Dmitri, I changed that.

Fantastic subject Mala, and well written as per your usual standard

I particularly like this sentence
>>>
Though ultimately discarded, Heineken's idea seems more relevant than ever today. Perhaps it's time to recycle it.



Two nitpicks

one is your spelling of {foto} >>>photograph

(From a foto album entitled)

and also that the link goes to the entire album and the reader has to scroll through a lot of other photos before discovering the intended illustration.


The other nitpick is to do with footnote 5

>>> About 220 million short tons.

I am only familiar with metric tonnes, I think I would need a footnote on the footnote to explain what a 'short ton' is. Sorry to be pedantic

I wonder also if the method of solar disinfection of contaminated water needs to be expanded - I have heard of it, but others may not have. However, it is an aside to the main message of your piece, which is re-using packaging as building materials, so it may be seen as a side track.

Great work!

I've changed the foto to photo

I haven't changed the link. There is no immediate way to get to the full album from the individual photographs, so I didn't want to link to just the one. There are multiple pictures of bottle houses in there, and anyway, the entire thing is rather fascinating.

A short ton is an American ton, 2,000 pounds. A long ton, the imperial ton, is 2,240 pounds, but as far as I know, it's rarely used anymore except in naval terminology. A metric tonne is 1,000 kg, about 2,204 and a bit pounds. The footnote is there to translate for people who are afraid of the metric system.

Not sure this is the place to explain solar water disinfection, but if you write an entry, I'll link to it Or I'll just find a page elsewhere explaining it. (I've got one, but it's in a book... )

<>

I used 'Find' or PC equivalent, putting 'bottle house' in the search box and found it immediately. Much quicker than scrolling.

Websailor

Fascinating

And you forgot a space somewhere in "Heinekenused".

All in all it's just another brick in the wall

Good idea, Webbie

And missing space found and inserted, Toyboy

An Entry of the Month candidate I feel. Nice one Mala

excellant entry - can you make it with non emptied bottles i wonder

As a matter of interest where did you find out about these? (as an idea rather than facts)?

Looks good

Actually, I'm not entirely sure where I first saw it. Might've been somewhere on the internet (like the now sadly defunct Athanasius Kircher Society blog), but it was probably a passing comment in a lecture about Rural Studio, or something. I've had it in my "to write" list for a while.

(I should write one on Rural Studio, too, but will wait until the end of the month for that, since I might be going to a talk by one of them then )

Oh, right, as for non-emptied bottles: I'm not sure that would work. The upper layers would put a lot of weight on the lower ones, and a filling would alter the stress distribution within the bottle. And if you expose a bottle full of beer to the hot sun for too long, it might explode!

The new PET ones are designed to stack even when they're full, though they'd be filled with water, not beer.

Thats quitter talk - it just imposes a time limit on how long you have to drink your house.

I assume theres nothing preventing you from having a huge group iof friends over and drinking the bottles before building (might make interesting building methods though)

In actual terms of the piece i cant really add much past the fact that its very good.

Maybe I need to make it clearer that the people living in the houses aren't the same ones buying and drinking the (expensive, imported) beer - they just use the bottles *after* they're emptied (and presumably collected somewhere to use as building material.)

Either I didn't explain that well enough, or you're all just fascinated by the excuse to drink a thousand bottles of beer.

Guilty as charged im afraid (though im not actually much of a beer drinker myself)

But no i kind of took the opinion that it would be drunk by a large group of people who could then use it to make a house.

Though i cant remember seeing how these bottles were gathered up (it may well be in there but im being lazy and havent read it since this morning)