We’ve all seen the dismal photos of distressed wildlife trapped in various single-use plastic, or worse, strangled by those infamous plastic rings that come with many six-packs of beer.
Well, major beverage company Molson Coors has decided to take action, announcing last week that the six-packs of its Coors Light brand will no longer use these dangerous plastic rings. Instead, they’ll be selling their beer in a recyclable, sustainable cardboard alternative. This move makes Coors the largest US beer brand to shift away from the plastic rings.
“We’re chill about a lot of things, but single-use plastic isn’t one of them,” tweeted Coors Light. “So we’re eliminating plastic rings from our packaging starting this year and finishing by 2025.”
Phasing out the plastic rings is part of a bigger sustainability plan at Molson Coors, that includes a series of environmental goals to be reached by 2025. The goals include:
- Ensuring all packaging is 100 percent reusable, recyclable, or compostable and all plastic packaging is made from 30 percent recycled content.
- Growing Coors barley in 10 percent less water.
- Brewing beer in 22 percent less water.
- Restoring 3.5 billion gallons of water to watersheds.
- Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by half in direct operations and by 20 percent across the company’s supply chain.
“We believe that buying beer shouldn’t mean buying plastic,” declared vice president of marketing for the Coors family of brands, Marcelo Pascoa. “That’s why we’re taking a step toward making packaging even more sustainable, and with this achievement Coors Light will save 400,000 pounds of single-use plastic from becoming waste every year.”
