Plastic six-pack rings that hold six drinks together are extremely dangerous for our marine life. The six pack rings find their ways into our oceans and water, and they can get wrapped around marine animals necks! Thankfully, a brewery has created an edible six pack ring!
Six pack rings or six-pack yokes are a set of connected plastic rings that are used in multi-packs of beverage, particularly six-packs of beverage cans. Since the late 1970s, six-pack rings were cited as a particularly dangerous form of marine litter as marine wildlife were found entangled in the rings, sometimes strangling to death. But since 1989, six-pack rings in the USA have been manufactured to be 100 percent photo-degradable, so the plastic will begin to disintegrate in just a few days, allowing animals to easily free themselves from the brittle and crumbling rings. But recently, this brewery created a six-pack ring that will feed animals instead of harming them.
According to Greenpeace, approximately 70% of Seabirds and 80% of Sea Turtles are now ingesting plastic. As a result, 1,000,000 birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles are dying each year. Consequently, In partnership with We Believers ad agency, the Saltwater Brewery in Delray conjured the brilliant idea to create edible six-pack rings that feed, rather than kill, marine life to offset the damage being done by plastic pollution. The rings are created from beer by-products during the brewing process, such as barley and wheat, and are completely safe for humans and fish to eat. In addition, the invention is 100% biodegradable and compostable.
This is a huge advancement in environmental technologies. Americans drank 6.3 billion gallons of beery in 2015, and 50% of that volume was from cans! This invention will have a huge impact on our environment and sea life! I promise the sea turtles are thanking you for this!