Plastic as a material has pretty much changed the way we live our lives- it’s cheap,

can be moulded into practically any shape and is, for the most the part, easily recyclable (when people bother to). So why is it that we still use glass bottles and cans to store our beer in? Is it to do with aesthetics? Taste? Or is there another factor at play?

While many would be surprised to learn this, it turns out beer is sometimes stored in plastic bottles in some parts of the world, for example in the UK. There, plastic beer bottles are a fairly common sight at festivals and the like. In fact, at particularly large events in the UK, it’s often mandatory to serve alcohol in plastic bottles, something the author of this piece of has experienced first hand from both sides of the bar.

For example, during the 2012 Olympic games, Heineken, the official alcohol sponsor of the games stocked fridges across London with over a million plastic bottles of beer made especially for the event. While they claimed it was for environmental reasons, it has been speculated that it was actually done due to safety concerns. For any event where you’re going to have thousands of drunk people from various cultures watching a competition they’re emotionally invested in, all within extremely close proximity to one another, it just makes sense not to give them tiny glass clubs and potential means to stab one another.