Coors Light and Droga5 Opened a Plastic-Free 'Future Mart' in NYC

For Coors Light, the future is now—and it’s plastic-free.

A few weeks back, the Molson Coors brand launched a pop-up store in New York City to hype its removal of plastic rings from all global packaging by 2025.

Located in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood, the 535-square-foot “Future Mart” was made entirely from sustainable materials. These included aluminum, steel, plywood, cork, recycled paper, glass, cardboard and Ecor fibers—that’s brewery waste.

Sure, any store would use such construction materials—well, not Ecor fibers—but there’d be heaps of plastic, too. Not so at the Future Mart:

The infrastructure, walls, shelves, floor and props were 100 percent biodegradable, right down to the ink used for signage. Some 1,000 visitors 21 and older toured the activation, devised by Droga5, from March 1-6. Check out some video footage here.

Cute touches included a “bodega cat” made of felt (though real tabbies biodegrade, too!) and lottery scratchers offering prizes like beer-infused soap. An ice machine and payphone played Coors commercials, while merch such as Coorsatelli pasta and Sustainable Syrup lined the racks.

The team also planted 100 trees to offset carbon generated by production and transportation.

“Whether you go grab a beer or a pack of gum, it takes a step inside your local bodega to realize one thing: Plastic is everywhere,” Droga5 creative director Bernardo González tells Muse. “So, it got us wondering: What if it wasn’t? What if not only beer but every other item you find at a mini-mart was plastic-free? And what if we built this place for real, making people realize a plastic-free future is closer than they imagined?”

Using local resources and vendors kept travel pollution to a minimum, and Greenpoint-based Pink Sparrow provided design and fabrication expertise. 

“Not only were we letting people know that Coors Light was going plastic-free, but we wanted them to reflect on their everyday relationship with plastic,” González says. “So, we treated this activation as a living museum of sorts—part store, part art installation, where people could commune with plastic-free products that are usually plastic-full. As they explored the space, they could learn more about Coors Light’s sustainability efforts and wash it all down with a cold beer.”