The world is running out of sand. Sand is used in everything from construction to pharmaceuticals, and as result two thirds of the world’s beaches are retreating. Desert sand is too fine to be used in construction, sending the demand for beach sand soaring. A billion-dollar black market has resulted in the illegal extraction of sand from Sierra Leone to Singapore. Sand is the second most exploited natural resource on the planet and takes hundreds of thousands of years to regenerate.

At the same time, global mainstream beer consumption is in decline. So we built machines that turn empty beer bottles into a sand substitute. To save their beaches, we asked New Zealanders to empty a bottle of DB Export. Made from desert sand, each bottle makes 200 grams of sand substitute. To make a difference we needed New Zealanders to empty as many DB Export bottles as possible!

Our promotional campaign encouraged New Zealanders to take action. TV, outdoor, digital – even the labels on the bottles – everything directed drinkers to take one simple action: empty a bottle of DB Export. The more empty bottles we had, the more sand substitute we could create.

The machines toured bars and events all over the country. Each machine turns a bottle of DB Export into sand in just 5 seconds. As the bottle is pulverised a vacuum system removes contaminants like plastic labels, leaving behind 200 grams of sand substitute.

We then partnered with New Zealand’s largest recycling company to create commercial quantities of our sand by combining our empty bottles with non-recyclable glass destined for landfill. For every 12 pack of beer sold in New Zealand, 3 bottles end up in landfill. DB Export Beer Bottle Sand kept both sand on the beaches, and glass out of landfill.

The machines (and their social media connectivity) helped drive a huge response.

Our drinkers emptied 13 million bottles - helping DB Export become the only mainstream beer to grow in value and volume. In a category declining at 6%, DB Export sales increased by 9%.

Thanks to our drinkers, Beer Bottle Sand was supplied to construction companies, roading projects, golf courses, and drainage companies around the country.

A two year deal to supply Beer Bottle Sand to Drymix (New Zealand’s largest concrete producer) has seen us create our own brand of eco-concrete, sold to consumers through the country’s biggest home improvement chain (104 stores). Requests for our machines have come from as far away as Japan, with scoping to supply Dubai with 500 machines currently underway.

Thousands of user-generated videos were shared from machines, with our campaign video receiving 53 million views and 700,000 shares.