Open Container SAV turns your favorite local craft beer can into a recyclable plant home
For Rae Norton, her path to entrepreneurship sounds familiar. During quarantine and the subsequent months of limited social interaction, she focused on things she loved: good craft beers and gardening grew as passions to carry her through the tough days of lockdown.
And then, Norton went through her collection of empty brew cans, carefully removing the tops, drilling holes in the bottom and adding succulents from her own garden.
By repurposing the cans, she created individual plant containers. And thus, Open Container SAV was born.
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Norton went to Georgia Southern University where she studied travel and tourism, and as a student, worked at Eagle Creek Brewing. There, her eyes opened to the art, science and teamwork involved in making craft beer.
“I was part of a crew, real camaraderie, and saw how the brewers worked to solve problems,” said Norton. “I learned the creativity that goes into making a heavily fruited smoothie-style sour beer. And the packaging, the label designs are real art created by artists.”
She moved to Savannah last June and started working at Two Tides Brewing Co. where she began collecting some of their beer cans. Norton was onto something.
She figured that when the brewers made a one-off beer with its own unique label, it was a sort of limited edition piece of art. And so the cans held their own value.
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“I’ve always been a gardener,” said Norton. “And my idea was if I could combine these unique cans with a plant, it would be one way to preserve this short-run piece of art.”
Norton went to work creating her own soil, a combination of peat moss, sand, and worm castings, a mixture well-suited for sustaining succulents in small spaces. The small containers then became gifts for family and friends until she realized a bigger market may be receptive to her concept.
Currently, Norton works at Service Brewing where she’s part of the creative team and continues collecting cans. She grows rows of succulents on her screened-in porch and keeps on building her business.
More: Service Brewing Co. celebrates 7 years of craft beer and charity in Savannah
Mostly, she does custom orders, and outside of those, sells five to ten plants per week for $15-20. Each comes with its own plant name and care instruction note sheet.
“The biggest thing is that no matter what you love, there’s always a way to give back by recycling and repurposing. Don’t let anyone get in your way or tell you otherwise because some will love what you do. Whether it’s one person or one hundred, it’s better to share your inspiration than keep it to yourself.”
To place an order, visit Open Container SAV on Instagram at @opencontainersav.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Open Container SAV turns local craft beer cans into plant homes
