By Katie Davis I n the Summer months, all year round for some folks, it is time to head to the water for some recreational activities, whether it be fishing, boating or spending the day with your feet in the sand. If you are an adult it will also involve a beverage or two, and in most cases they will be of the adult variety. The plastic rings used to package what is perhaps the most popular of the Summer adult alcoholic beverage, beer, is a menace to the environment and extremely harmful to fish, birds, turtles and other sea creatures that get tangled in the rings or mistake them as food. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that implements its activi- ties through the five program areas: education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, and com- munication and information, experts say that more than one million sea birds and over one hundred thousand mammals die annually from plastic pollutions. Saltwater Brewery, a small craft beer company in Delray Beach, South Florida, is trying to make a big impact on oceanic pollution and reduce the threat to the environ- ment with the development of an edible packaging for
beer that will be biodegradable and eco-friendly to protect marine life.
Biodegradable packing is not a new idea as it has been used in many other industries, however applying the tech- nology to packaging in the beer industry is and to take it a step further these edible rings are made from wheat and barley used during the brewing process. The spent grains are treated and pressed to form the rings. With almost seventy billion cans of beer consumed annually and the pressure that is put on making packag- ing more environmentally friend we can understand why there is a lot of interest in the industry for the product with marco, micro and craft breweries all wanting to offer this packaging for their products. Saltwater Brewery has not disclosed which brands had already expressed interest in the eco-friendly pack- aging, but said “rest assured, the world’s players are catching on.” It should also be said that regarding if packaging is eco- friendly or not we should try to keep packaging out of our waters.
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OCTOBER 2016 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS
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