edible-rings3-720x480-cSaltwater Brewery, a craft microbrewery in Florida Unites States, has created a 100% biodegradable six-pack holder to provide a safe and environmentally friendly alternative to holding beer cans. This holder has the traditional six-pack rings design, but instead of using plastic the company uses a material made from barley and wheat leftover from their brewing process, making it fully biodegradable, compostable, and edible.

Data shows that over one million sea birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals, including sea turtles lose their life each year from being trapped in plastic six-pack rings. The current solution to prevent these animals from getting caught is to cut each of the six rings before throwing the holder out, eliminating the closed circles which trap them. Though this may prevent creatures from getting caught, the pieces can still easily be eaten by animals that come across it and the plastic still adds to the ocean pollution.

Saltwater Brewery’s six-pack rings allow individuals to freely throw out the holder after removing the beer cans while causing zero waste and negative impact on the wildlife. Once in the garbage, the rings can be either eaten by any animal causing them no harm during digestion or left to completely decompose over time.

The new six-pack rings material is more expensive than the traditional plastic rings to make, but Saltwater Brewery believes it has the potential to become the industry standard with all major breweries switching to this method. However, even just a few companies switching to this new material will drastically cut down on the amount of sea life deaths and pollution created each year.

Much like Saltwater Brewery, Eclipse Automation strives to be environmentally friendly as possible in our processes and solutions, offering sustainable solutions for our clients. Through the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility plan, Eclipse’s green initiatives currently include eco-friendly bikes, a recycling program, and electricity efficiency program, with many more on the way.

Source: Digital Trends