This weekend I celebrated my 32nd birthday.

Ok, don’t choke on your breakfast now as I know it’s hard to comprehend that I am 32, but please just believe me when I say so, as it’s best for all of us to just go with this.

Besides my birth, this time every year something really important happens.

The FA Cup. 

Ever since I was a child all I could remember was my dad and his friends at my house celebrating my “day” with a braai (BBQ), beers and the football on the telly. Ok, to be honest it was more about the football than my birthday, but once again let’s just go with it.

To keep with this tradition I thought I would get a few mates over on my “day”, with lots of beer and of course football on the big screen.

That was my plan. But I didn’t take into account one thing.

My wife.

Ok two things. 

My wife and the Royal wedding.

Those two things combined ended a 32 year tradition in an instant. No longer was it a night of football but rather a night of ladies dressed to the nines wearing hats, drinking Pimm’s and the words “jolly good” randomly being shouted. 

God, don’t save the queen. 

Save me.

So there I was sitting with my henpecked mates in the corner, no football on the telly surround by the background noise of cello’s and the odd “ooohs” and “aws” with the only thing saving us from it all. 

Beer.

Inspired by our little life savers in hand we contemplated life, solved third world problems and started talking about the ocean and the environmental issues. It was then that a mate of mine started to talk about an idea he had heard about and an idea that is a favorite of mine and that I really wish I had done.

That idea was the edible 6 Pack rings for the Saltwater Brewery.

You may not have heard about it. But it is genius. It’s a product invention and it solves a global problem that has been the hot topic on pretty much every channel around the world.

Ocean plastic.

You see in the United States alone there are over 6.3 Billion gallons of beer consumed and 50% of those are in cans. It’s these cans that are causing a problem, well not the cans but how they are packaged using plastic rings to hold the six pack together to be more specific.

This problem inevitably ends up in our oceans affecting our wildlife and our environment. This is the exact problem that a few creative people wanted to change and it all started in a little agency called We Believers. 

They had an idea to make a 6 pack ring holder out of environmentally safe elements. Elements made using the wastage that they would normally throw away from the brewing process. They then repurposed into an safe 6 pack ring holder which is safe for the marine life.

The new packaging primarily had to serve it’s purpose of being strong enough to hold cans but most importantly solve the environmental issue at hand. After numerous tests and prototypes they finally had it. All they had to do was start the next step of getting someone to buy into it and testing it out in the market.

That’s when they then found Saltwater Breweries. A small craft brewery with a philosophy that is all about beer but most importantly about the ocean too. Their main target market was anyone who loves the ocean from surfers to fisherman. Together they rolled this product out as a “test bed” and over night they became the topic of conversation over every pint glass in the world. 

But it wasn’t just in the beer community that this was being talked about as the rest of the world picked it up too. In no time the video received over 105 million views and over 1.8 million shares. 

The media lapped it up and with outlets such as the BBC running full features to Fast Company doing entire articles on this. You could say that with the 3.5 billion media impressions and counting, it was a hit.

Besides the mass appeal it also picked up all the awards along the way from the famous White Pencil at D&AD to a few Golds at Cannes, One Show and others. It has more importantly been recognized as a game changer for the beer industry and their impact on the environment.

Now they are trying to get this to scale up and are working with other major breweries around the world from the InBev’s to the SABMiller groups to roll this out and turn back the tide of ocean plastic.

So next time you are sipping your beer, take a moment to think about this very important moment in history. No, I am not talking about the Royal wedding and how pretty all the strangers were in their outfits, but rather the moment where a group of creative people believed they could make a difference, then actually made a difference.

Now that’s something to drink to.

Cheers.