Bid to smash old habits with safer pint glass

Indo wrote:

TIME is being called on the traditional beer glass as Britain's Home Office calls in experts to develop a safer pint pot. The move follows growing concern at the number and extent of injuries caused in violent incidents involving glassware each year.

Over the next four months a team of designers will produce a range of drinking vessels that are not only a safer pint glass but, crucially, find favour with the public.

Although there is confidence that the designers can produce a safer glass, the key problem is overcoming the drinkers' attachment to the traditional pint glass.

Sebastian Conran, who heads the Home Office's Design and Technology Alliance Against Crime, said: "There are existing plastic glasses and if you go to a baseball game in the United States you can buy beer in a paper cup.

"People are quite used to drinking beer out of plastic and paper things but there is a feeling that in public it is a traditional thing to drink beer out of a glass."

Mr Conran said that reducing the estimated 87,000 injuries caused every year by glassware is the key behind the initiative. "We want to find something that will end the situation where shards of glass can inflict quite horrible injuries," he added.

Designers have been asked to look at four specific areas as they develop the next generation of pint glasses: adding a new feature to the glass material that provides safety when it is broken; developing a composite or alternative material; ensuring that plastic and polycarbonate is at the core of any new vessel; and making sure that the new material makes no difference to the consumer's enjoyment of the drink. (© The Times, London)