Plastic ring carriers and shrink wrap will be removed from multipacks of all Diageo beer products, including Guinness and Harp.

The maker of Guinness has announced it is ditching plastic beer packaging in favour of recyclable and biodegradable cardboard.

Plastic ring carriers and shrink wrap will be removed from multipacks of all Diageo beer products – including Irish stout Guinness, lagers Harp and Rockshore, and the red ale Smithwick’s.

The new packaging – part of a 18.5 million euro (£16m) investment to reduce the amount of plastic that Diageo uses – will be first used at a bottling and packaging plant in Belfast and appear on shelves in Ireland from August

It will arrive in the UK and other markets, including the US, Canada, South Korea and Europe, next year.

Diageo, which claims less than 5% of the packaging it currently uses is plastic, expects the change to reduce plastic usage at the company by more than 400 tonnes annually.

Oliver Loomes, country director of Diageo Ireland, said: “Managing our environmental impact is important for the planet and the financial sustainability of our business.