Could biodegradable six-pack rings save the sea turtles?
A Florida beverage company has helped invent biodegradable and edible rings that, if used widely, it hopes could reduce the harmful impact of plastics on oceans and wildlife.
A Florida craft beer maker has replaced the harmful plastic of six-pack rings with ones made out of the barley and wheat leftover from the beermaking process.
In a project led by New York ad agency , the partners have engineered rings that are biodegradable and perhaps even edible 鈥� although this has not be proven 鈥� by marine animals that often fall victim to entanglement, strangulation, and deadly digestive problems caused by the ubiquitous rings that are used to package cans of soda and beer and end up in the oceans and in other natural habitats.
鈥淲e believed in it so much,鈥� Chris Gove, 聽president,聽told Mashable. 鈥淚t came about through a love for the ocean and truly caring for the environment.鈥�
The edible rings are patent pending, with 500 of them produced last month as a prototype. Gove told Mashable that his team hopes to , and by 2017 to spread the invention to other craft breweries.
"I think it's ," Mike Harting, chief executive officer of 3 Daughters Brewing in St. Petersburg, Fla., told the Tampa Bay Times. "The industry needs other options, and the fact someone has found one that happens to be eco-friendly, too, that's awesome."
For now the edible 6-pack rings cost a few cents more than the plastic ones, which run about $.10 apiece, but that price could come down if the new rings are widely adopted by the beverage industry.
"The kind of support we're being met with, assuming that holds, that could happen," brewery co-founder Bo Eaton told the Times.
Plastic debris is accumulating in the oceans at an alarming rate. And it鈥檚 everywhere: floating in the deep sea, buried in Arctic ice, and being ingested with deadly consequences for about 700 species of marine wildlife.
In 2010 about 8 million tons of plastic trash ended up in the ocean from coastal countries, an amount that is likely without changes to garbage collection and management, according to a study described last year by National Geographic. That amount of plastic is like lining up five grocery bags of trash on every foot of coastline around the globe, explains a study author.
鈥淎nd by 2025, those five grocery bags of plastic are going to be ten bags," Jenna Jambeck, the University of Georgia environmental engineer who led the study, told National Geographic.
While the biodegradable rings are promising, but it鈥檚 not yet clear whether they鈥檙e safe for marine wildlife to ingest, since wheat and barley are not part of their natural diet. Research is needed to determine this.
鈥淥bviously it鈥檚 better than plastic, there鈥檚 no doubt about that,鈥� Jennie Gilbert, co-founder of Cairns Turtle Rehabilitation Centre in Australia, told Australian Geographic. 鈥淏ut , does it cause problems? We don鈥檛 know that,鈥� she said.