If you are skating off to the bar this Friday night, and you choose to consume beer, you can actually make some big effective eco-choices simply by who you sidle up to at the bar and where. Can, bottle or glass. Local or shipped in.While your taste buds and status may be focused on the actual beer product you are imbibing, it's the container it comes in and how it got to the bar that really makes the eco (carbon emissions) difference.
There are a huge number of variables that make up the entire carbon footprint of beer. In Australia, beer is typically purchased in glass bottles, aluminium cans and in draught form served on tap from a stainless steel or aluminium keg. Commercial beer comes packaged in cans, bottles or kegs and all need to be transported to point of sale and transport of beer from brewery to retailer accounts for over 20% of an average beer’s carbon footprint. Because keg beer allows for more volume, and has to collect less in terms of packaging, beer on tapjust wins the travel miles race. (Yes, even as the keg travels home empty.)If however you are drinking a locally brewed beer, on tap and on the site, you are hands down the travel miles king.
If you are drinking beer from a glass container, the non-consumable materials (everything but the beer), such as glass bottles, labels, bottle caps, pallets, plastic wrap, metal cans, cardboard cartons, can make up another one third of beer's total carbon footprint, making container choice very significant. These different components all have to be designed, sourced, made, placed and then presented for bottling, after which they need to be packaged into boxes or shrink wrapped for transport. After you spend 10 minutes or so consuming the contents, the container then needs to be disassembled from its pretty things before recycling.
Packaging is actually the greatest single contributor to the total greenhouse gas emissions generated through the entire beer production cycle. This is mainly because cans and bottles are single use AND single serve packaging. Beer on tap is delivered by a single stainless steel keg, which is often been used consistently for up to 30 years.
Unlike the Brits, who actually do a pretty good job of energy conservation by drinking their brews on the warm side, we Australians like our beer frosty cold. And that means all three beer container delivery options need refrigeration, usually in the form of very big carbon emitting cold room.
Beer cans and Beer bottles are are both infinitely recyclable. The main problem is that they are not reused, like good old-fashioned glass milk bottles were reused for example, but are automatically single-use with the desired outcome of being recycled. In most states, cans and bottles are part of the cash for containers scheme and unlike wine bottles, can be recycled. Recycling does come at a cost however and that brings us back to beer on tap. There are no empties from beer on tap, apart from the glass you are using and the keg under the bar, which can be washed and reused and the only cost to the environment comes in managing the reuse of kegs and beer glasses.
Empty beer cans form part of the five million tonnes of metal wastes recovered for recycling annually in Australia . Our metal wastes recovering and recycling rates are very high with a total recovery rate of 90%. Off that, over 2 billion aluminium cans are recycled annually into new aluminium which saves a tremendous amount of energy that would have otherwise been spent mining for Bauxite. The recycling scene for aluminium in generally positive and, coupled with more “Cash for Cans” schemes, will only improve. However, the conversion of metal can wastes from the general community lags considerably compared to metals recovered from industry. So beer drinkers, aim straight for the recycle bin or cash for containers. We need you.
While glass is infinitely recyclable, only 56 per cent of Australia’s glass is recovered for recycling. And that is a problem because glass literally does live forever. This low rate reflects the difficulty of recovery from mixed waste loads. Most glass packaging is collected in co-mingled form from households or commercial sites such as pubs, clubs, sporting venues, hotels and restaurants. Glass is also collected through container deposit depots. Beer bottles with labels form part of the wider problem with recycling glass as these two materials need to be separated for effective recycling. Additionally, broken glass contaminates the recycling process of other materials, particularly paper. If you are drinking beer in bottles, make sure it ends up in your recycle or cash for container bin in tact (not broken).
The packaging container is not the culprit in the carbon footprint of kegged beer. The big factor affecting the eco-friendliness of keg beer is the amount of travel miles attached to moving the keg. Logistics companies manage a highly mobile workforce of rented or leased steel soldiers (kegs) moving around the country between breweries and pubs, clubs, hotels and restaurants. And the kegs may spend just as much time travelling empty as they travel full.
In any product cycle, we know travel miles are one of the biggest culprits of green house gas emissions. And it is the return of empty kegs back to the brewery for refilling that puts a lot of carbon miles onto kegged beer. When larger breweries are using their own kegs, the return trip back to the brewer takes up half of the travel miles. However, logistics companies, that are moving kegs between multiple locations and brewers (with cleaning processes between refilling) can optimise the amount of empty keg miles accrued with smart planning and scheduling. Tap beer kegs have at least double the travel miles of canned or bottled beer, because the keg it came in has to travel back to a brewery for refilling. It's true that bottles and cans do travel to landfill or to be recycled, once consumed, but the big difference with kegs is that they can have a life span of up to 30 years before they are retired. With that point, they are the kings of multiple use packaging.
In the end, it's pretty clear that packaging and travel miles are the biggest planet costs in the production of beer. And that means hipster heaven, the local brewery, drinking beer on tap is the place to be for the most eco-friendly way to drink beer. Or at your mate’s dodgy backyard set-up. Your choice. And bonus, if you choose to skate, walk or lime it to the brewery, you will have clicked up a few more emission positive points along the way. Certainly enough to earn one more beer. With an average of 140 calories per glass of beer needing 40 minutes exercise to offset, that's probably not a bad idea!