These biodegradable six-pack rings double as fish food
Florida's Saltwater Brewery has a pretty clever idea for replacing those environment-destroying plastic rings holding your Tecate cans together: animal food. Technically, the rings are a combination of wheat and barley, leftover from the brewing process. The brewery hopes the biodegradable (and fully digestable!) packaging will help stop marine life and birds from choking on plastic.
Or it could be a snack for humans
As Discover Magazine points out, Saltwater partnered with the ad agency We Believers to create and promote the packaging. The real-world impact of the project, for now, is small. Saltwater is just one small brewery in Florida, but it hopes to use the edible rings on all of the cans it produces — around 400,000 per month.
Most six-pack rings are currently made from photo-degradable plastic, which means they break down in sunlight, according to Discover. But it can take up to 90 days for those rings to dissolve, and even then some plastic never fully breaks down.
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