Present (Old) Concept:

1) Red crate and glass bottle:
Due to the design itself, there should be slight clearance in the inner dimensions of crate-pocket and the bottle outer diameter (OD). This leads to shaking and causes breakage during handling & transportation (a fact which is already known to the cola-giants).
2) Pet Bottle:
If recycled, is usually recycled completely meaning as a whole. Domestic reuse is generally in form of using it for storing drinking water (at least in this part of the world). This type of reuse is generally not recommended. There have been few studies showing that this could be potentially carcinogenic.

Coming to 3R Crate Design:

First R is REUSE:
Cut the pet bottle into 4 parts as indicated… Yellow zones and Green parts
Reuse the green parts as indicated in the transparent crate.

Lower Portion of Pet Bottle:
Slight curvature of the upper part enables easy loading of the glass bottle. Design is such that glass bottle fits snugly and there is almost no relative movement between the two. Also the pet bottle itself is fitting tightly in the crate envelop.

Upper Portion of Pet Bottle:
Use an array of upper parts fixed together to form a plate (not shown in model). This plate can be used to secure the upper part of the glass bottles thereby securing it and giving more stability.

Now the Second R is REDUCE:
Since the glass bottle is more secured, its wall thickness can be reduced slightly, say 1mm or so, without affecting the ‘strength’ aspect (i.e. one of the key criteria for thickness of glass bottle was to withstand the jolts during handling)

Effect of this reduction:
1. Production of Glass Bottles: will require lesser material and bottle will be lighter.
2. Storage/Cooling: Since the wall thickness is reduced, to cool the same amount of liquid inside some energy would be saved (albeit very small amounts)
3. Handling: Lighter bottle means easier handling (again some energy saving)
4. Transportation: Overall weight reduction (let’s say 1000-2000 bottles carried by a trailer) thereby reducing the fuel consumed

Optional Marketing Advantage:
If the existing crate is to be retrofitted, OD of bottle would have to be same. Therefore, internal diameter should be increased. Now if the company wants it can offer ‘more’ cola at the same price. Leading to a ‘Cola-War’. Such wars benefit the consumers.

Also there is large scope in the reducing the material used / weight of the crate itself, but we stick to the ones already exisiting and REUSE them…

Finally coming to Third R – RECYCLE
The Yellow portions of the Pet bottle to be finally RECYCLED. So the load on recycling process itself is reduced, instead of recycling the complete bottle now we recycle only smaller parts of it.

So that concludes the Design Philosophy….

Have tired to take into consideration may partical things that we (designer community) tend to neglect when it comes to “designing for eco-friendliness”…

should check for the complete cycle vis a vis the energy factors, materials, weight, processes, etc… not just the cost, economics, sale-ability, looks, asthetics ;-)

ofcourse these things are also important but not the most important…

Comments welcome as usual

Hi Abu,
I think you developed a great concept. What does Coca Cola says to that?
Let me ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind, about things that came into my mind while i was reading your comments:
1) how to cut the PET bottle (becasue of damage during cutting, sharp edges, seperation and handling) Considering all these points, I am not sure if it is still profitable
2) When you build a plate out of the upper halfs, you have to somehow union the upper halfs with some kind of carrier (ideally the same material). If so, why not shredding the PET like now and build those plates from the shredded material.
3) The whole idea of those inserts came (I think) only becasue the exsting crates have too much room for the bottle. if the pockets of the existing crates would be redesigned to have something like flexible little “arms”, similar to a clip, the bottle would be secured automatically and those little arms could be used for damping. AND which is a point to not forget: the crate would be out of one material, so no seperation process of the material.

In any case, I fully agree with all other points in your concept and it might be a great idea to give to the soft drink companies in this world to reduce garbage that they produce.

I must admit with all honesty that I did not think of this aspect of ‘How to cut’ PET bottle… will have to do some research on this…

About the plate thing… was just inspired by the ‘egg-crates’ and thought if we can cut the top portions of PET we can have similar structure. All you need is a thin mesh passing thru the centre of crate envelops which can hold together the parts and the empty spaces should be then good enough for restricting the movement of bottles.

Yes, the idea of inserts is to use the existing crates itself. And you’re right about having some kind of arms, dampers, etc within envelop which can restrain the movement.

Don’t know how Coke guys would respond to such a thing. Have lately seen very less glass bottles (0.5-1 liter although 200ml & 300ml are still around). Normally we get to see PETs for larger sizes in urban areas. They might have phased out glass bottles due to obvious reasons like additional costs of getting bottles back to bottling plants, breakages, sterilizing bottles. Coca Cola India website says ( http://www.coca-colaindia.com/brands/brands_home.aspx ) they still offer ‘Thums Up’ & ‘Coca Cola’ in larger glass bottles.

Donno if anyone from Coke is looking at this design :)

Anyways, thanks Alfred for your profound comments… Appreciate them…

you can cut it with a ion beam,but since you should do it ecologicaly,take a scrissor and go for it(or a beheading instrument >:) )