Carlsberg has announced a series of ground-breaking innovations including its new Snap Pack, which is set to reduce plastic waste globally by more than 1200 tonnes a year - the equivalent to 60 million plastic bags.
The Snap Pack replaces the plastic wrapping used around Carlsberg’s six packs with new technology that glues its cans together. A world first for the beer industry, it will reduce the amount of plastic used in traditional multi-packs by up to 76%.
Together Towards ZERO
“It’s an important day for Carlsberg. We are working hard to deliver on our ambitious sustainability agenda and to help tackle climate change,” Cees ’t Hart, CEO of the Carlsberg Group, said.
"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.”
Snap Pack is just one of the company’s sustainable packaging solutions, with the others including a switch to Cradle-to-Cradle Certified silver inks on its bottle labels to improve recyclability, a new coating on refillable glass bottles to extend their lifespan and therefore reduce their environmental footprint, and new caps that remove oxygen to make the beer taste fresher for longer.
The innovations, the drinks giant said, represent the first of a series of consumer-facing manifestations of Carlsberg Group’s sustainability programme, Together Towards ZERO.
External Partners
To help accelerate its progress, Carlsberg has collaborated with external partners such as Plastic Change, a Danish environmental organisation, in addition to the WWF.
”Our wildlife is drowning in plastic – and the problem is, unfortunately, growing considerably. We, therefore, need to act now. We need less plastic to end up in nature,” Bo Øksnebjerg, Secretary General in WWF Denmark, said.
“That is why we consider it huge progress that Carlsberg is now launching solutions that significantly reduce the amount of plastic in its packaging. With these new solutions, Carlsberg has taken the first big steps on the journey towards a more clean and green future.”
In celebration of the new launch, Carlsberg unveiled its own unique version of Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid statue made entirely from its new Snap Pack cans, held together with glue.
The Danish brewer raised its full-year profit outlook last month after second-quarter sales beat forecasts on growing demand for its expensive beers in China and strong sales in Russia during the World Cup.
© 2018 Checkout – your source for the latest Irish retail news. Article by Aidan O’Sullivan. Click subscribe to sign up for the Checkout print edition.
