In a “world-first”, beer company Carlsberg has replaced their 6-pack plastic rings for glue.
After testing out 4,000 different adhesives, the brewer has settled for a glue that is strong enough to hold their beers together for shelving and travel, but relaxed enough for the consumer to break apart when it’s finally time to crack open a cold one.
The new design is projected to reduce the Danish company’s plastic usage by 75%, which is roughly 1,300 tons, or the equivalent of 60 million plastic bags.
Inventor Christopher Stuhlmann says he got the idea after he paid a visit to his local hardware store.
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“The starting point was going to a hardware shop and buying all the adhesive I could get, all the glue that was there,” says Stuhlmann.
“Over the weekend I just glued things together and made a short video for my chief executive and so the idea was born,” he added.
The United Kingdom will be the first kingdom to test the glue packaging, as they consume roughly one third of the beer company’s product.
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This is not the first time that brewers have tried to move past the plastic ring packaging; in 2016, a craft beer maker in Florida created an edible, biodegradable 6-pack ring made out of wheat and barley waste leftovers, but the costs of production were too high to make the design very accessible.
However, the brewer hopes that if more beer companies adopt the design, then it will bring down the costs of manufacturing.
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