Recycling Initiative

Doing our bit

Let’s discuss thoughtless, wasteful, and energy intensive packaging for a moment. Bananas wrapped in plastic on a tray – WTF? Yeah you’ve seen it - a classic example of next level obscene single use packaging…It’s bombarding us everywhere, preying on catatonic people that don’t really think about the fact, that it’s a legacy of trash they will leave behind forever, or how much energy was used to produce it for a single use.

What about beer packaging?. Most progressive breweries that actually care about the ball we’re living on (or frisbee - if you’re one of those flat earth goons) realise the days of the old plastic turtle killer six pack rings are OVER. Most six packs are enclosed in single use cardboard. While paper and cardboard can be recycled, remaking it still consumes energy and resources (water, ink etc)…which begs the question, is there a better alternative that is also re-usable?

We believe the answer is YES!

 

So we are front-footing a move to do the switcheroo from single use cardboard, to re-usable High Density Polyetheylene (HDPE) plastic holders…That’s right, PLASTIC! Be brave, read on. It may come as a surprise to the plastic haters out there, but solid HDPE holders for our community-based situation clearly come out on top environmentally compared to other options currently available. Here are a number of very good reasons these holders make sense: 
HDPE holders are made from 100% recycled plastic chip, and therefore do not add to existing waste but are made from existing waste.
The holder is re-usable. Admittedly this requires people – that’s you, our beer loving community - to recognize this, and either return them to us directly or place them in the recycle bin for retrieval and later re-use. If the holders do happen to break and can’t be re-used, HDPE is 100% recyclable.
For every Paktech holder we get back, we will donate 10 cents to our Xtreme Zero Waste buddies, to support the great work they do processing our towns waste..and hopefully returning holders to us!
From a cost point of view, this approach will also reduce our current packaging and labour cost as six packs are lightning quick to assemble, giving us more time to focus on brewing good beer…oh and the holders are dolphin friendly!

 

Not to get too cheesy but... we’d like to think involvement in such initiatives are useful for reinforcing Raglan’s community spirit, and also reminding us to be aware of our consumption and the fate of materials related to a purchase.

Whether we like it or not being much more aware of what we consume and where things may end up, is imperative if as a society we are to persist into the future. We are certainly trying to progress in that direction and hope you will support us too.

So if you buy our beer in these holders, please help us to re-use this resource by making the effort to send them back, or place them in your recycle bin, so the team up at Xtreme Zero Waste can collect them for us….then we will refill them with more yummy beer…oh yeah win win chin chin.