Your trusty four-pack of Guinness will no longer be wrapped in plastic or have plastic ring carriers from next summer, parent company Diageo has confirmed.
Multi-can packs of Guinness – as well as Harp’s lager and Smithwick’s ale – will be replaced by cardboard packs that are recyclable and biodegradable.
Individual cans, including the widget which is contained inside cans of Draught Guinness, are already recyclable.
Diageo said it was investing £16m to reduce the plastics and that this would save 400 tonnes of plastic annually. “We have been working tirelessly to make our packaging more environmentally friendly and I’m thrilled with this outcome,” David Cutter, Diageo’s chief sustainability officer said.
Last year, Carlsberg announced it too would ditch plastic holders, replacing it with glue to hold the cans together, saving 1,200 tonnes of plastic a year.
After a three-year development process, which involved testing more than 4,000 different adhesive formulations, it found that adding dots of glue bonding its new “Snap Packs” were strong enough to withstand the journey from shelf to home and sufficiently brittle to break when twisted.