When it comes to trash winding up in the ocean, the plastic rings that hold six packs together are what comes to people’s minds when they first think about litter and how it affects sea life. These rings are not only known to frequently entrap sea birds and turtles, they often get eaten by fish and mammals, leading to death.
Saltwater Brewery seeks to put and end to all of these situations as a result of littering by turning the trash into a food source. The team over at Saltwater have created fully edible and biodegradable six pack rings that wouldn’t lodge themselves into the digestive system of fish and fully degrade if they were to wind up wrapped around an animal.
Cutting the rings has been the popular method for many years now, however, while this method does help to prevent animals becoming trapped in the rings, other sea life still eat them, so the problem persists.
The rings from Saltwater Brewery are made with barley and wheat remnants that are leftover from the brewing process, keeping the cost relatively cheap. If bigger breweries jumped in on this method, costs would be driven down even over and would be comparable to the manufacturing cost of plastic rings.
Implementing this method across the board has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of marine lives every year. Just knowing that is worth the cost.
