Edible beer packaging could help save ocean wildlife

An American-based brewery has discovered an innovative way of combating the damage caused by beer packaging to the sea life environment.

Florida based Saltwater Brewery has created six-pack rings for their beer cans which are made up entirely of organic materials and can be composted or ingested by wildlife, such as sea turtles, without any adverse effects.

This is great news for the marine life of our oceans, where it is estimated a hundred thousand animals are entrapped or ingest plastic and die as a result every year, with sea birds, fish, sharks and important plankton all affected.

Currently, most breweries use plastic six-rings to bind together cans of beer for transportation with Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) and Polypropylene (PP) the most commonly used.

While other alternatives to plastics do exist such as cardboard carriers, they aren’t as environmentally friendly as Saltwater’s new packaging as they require trees to be chopped down. Saltwater’s packaging is made from entirely digestible materials such as barley and wheat which are leftovers from their brewing process. The brewery hopes that other beer manufacturers will follow suit and drive down the price to make LDPE a thing of the past.

We take recycling seriously at LSPS. For more information or to find out how we can help with your waste disposal efforts, please visit our website or call us on freephone 0800 083 7807.