Christian Wenande
January 25th, 2019

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Snap off a cold one will ya? (photo: Christian Wenande)

If you’ve been down the shop for a six pack of beer recently, you may have noticed some alternative packaging for Carlsberg products.

The traditional plastic ring can holders have been abandoned by the Danish brewery giant in favour of the new ‘Snap Pack’, a more sustainable option that will save the company 150 tonnes of plastic in Denmark alone.

“We always strive to improve and today’s launch clearly shows our ambition to follow in our founder’s footsteps towards a better tomorrow. Carlsberg’s Snap Pack will significantly reduce the amount of plastic waste, and we look forward to giving our consumers better beer experiences with less environmental impact,” said the CEO of Carlsberg, Cees ‘t Hart.

The Snap Pack, which has taken three years to develop, uses a technique that involves adding a bit of glue between the cans to hold them together, and Carlsberg is the first brewery in the world to implement the technique.

READ MORE: If Carlsberg didn’t do adverts … we’d probably think Denmark was in Sweden

Environmental backing
When fully implemented across the board, the Snap Pack is expected to reduce Carlsberg’s plastic consumption by a staggering 76 percent and cut out 1,200 tonnes of plastic waste every year – the equivalent of 60 million plastic bags. And that’s a big deal for environmental organisations.

”We see Snap Pack as an excellent example of a solution that leads to a significant reduction in plastic packaging, and it is our hope that it will lead to even more ambitious initiatives within reduction and recycling in Carlsberg in the coming years,” said Henrik Beha Pedersen, the head of environmental advocacy organisation Plastic Change.

Those unfamiliar with the new Snap Pack will find some short instructions on the handle of the pack – for instance it’s important to split the pack down the middle into two rows before clicking off the individual beers (check out Hart demonstrating the process in the video at the bottom of this article).

Leave the glue on the side of the cans when handing them in for the pant recycling system and drop the thin handle into the plastic waste disposal bin.

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