THE MULTI-PURPOSE WINE BOTTLE

How many wine bottles a year do you throw away? Do you even want to know? Although wine bottles can be recycled, all too often they get tossed into the trash, especially at bars and restaurants. But what if your wine bottle could offer you something in return? (Besides five cents that is.) The same thought occurred to Michelle Wills, a design student at Edinburgh Napier University in the United Kingdom: she has designed a wine bottle that can be re-purposed into both a wine glass and beer glass. Once the wine is gone, the bottle is specially designed to be reborn into drink ware. “There isn’t enough to encourage businesses to recycle their glass bottles and research showed that the bottles mostly get thrown out,” Wills told asylum magazine. “I hope this scheme will solve that. I wanted [the design] to be a practical solution to the re-use of wine bottles.”

The concept is as follows: Purchase the wine, send the empty bottle back to the manufacturer and then have the new glasses delivered along with a newly purchased wine. Currently, the bottle is only intended for businesses like bars and clubs. The sleek bottle is both functional and aesthetic and comes in green and black to better preserve the wine it holds. Subtly designed onto the wine bottle is the outline of two glasses. This new-age bottle concept is still in its infancy and has yet to be sold in the US. However, it’s currently on display at the Edinburgh Napier University Degree Show and the design has been purchased for use by licensed trades.