Well, thanks to a smart new promotion created by New Zealand brewers DB Breweries — working alongside the ad agency Colenso BBDO New Zealand — it’s possible to do exactly that.
“Two thirds of the world’s beaches are retreating as people across the world use non-renewable beach sand for construction, roading and other uses,” Simon Smith, brand PR and digital manager for DB Breweries, told Digital Trends. “We had some [conversations] over beers, and came up with an idea to crush glass bottles into a sand substitute that can be used in things such as construction, roading, even golf bunkers; meaning that we can keep our beautiful beach sand where it belongs: on our beaches.”
New Zealand, Smith said, has a pretty impressive recycling rate, although there’s always room to do more. To that end, DB Breweries has built several machines able to take empty bottles and turn them into substitute sand. All a drinker needs to do is deposit his or her bottle in the machine, which then uses miniature steel hammers to crush it into 200 grams of sand in only five seconds — after extracting the plastic labels with a vacuum system.
“Our sand will be processed through a screener which sorts it into a fine grades between 1.1 – 0.4mm particle sizes,” he continued. “Over the next few months, we’ll be creating up to 100 tons of sand, which is the equivalent of 500,000 DB Export Bottles. The resulting sand substitute will then be given to our construction and retail partners to use in place of beach sand.”
The ultimate goal is to provide a way of prompting people to recycle by giving them an image of what exactly it means to do so, rather than leaving it as an abstraction. “Our ambition for the campaign is for people to have something tangible to think about, such as the love of our beautiful beaches, as a reminder to recycle,” he said.
Hey, if it means we get to drink and save the planet, who’s losing out? Aside from our liver and bank balance, that is…
