The Bottle against Global Warming

This evening, on the 24th of February, 2011, the First Green Drinks meeting of the Mumbai chapter is happening in the Elbo Room in Bandra West, Mumbai.
For this very special occasion, we thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at other sustainable drinking habits. We found out about green breweries, green beer and green ways to reuse & recycle both bottle and content.

There are, apparently, many breweries doing their part to battle global warming, one bottle at the time. 

Green Breweries use, produce and conserve green energy. This energy ranges from solar, over wind to biogas produced from their own waste water. Green Breweries conserve water. They use better kettles, reducing the amount of water needed for the beer (which, after all, consists for the largest part of H2O). Green Breweries are local. They grow their own barley & hop and try to limit the distances travelled (both before and after production) to as little as possible. Green Breweries reduce, reuse, recycle. They reduce the amount of water and electricity (ab)used, they turn their used grains into animal fodder for nearby farms, they turn the vegetable oil used in the local pub and the waste from the production process (energy rich hops, barley & yeast) into biodiesel and biogas (reducing the need for expensive fossil fuels).

It might be interesting to note that one of these green breweries is the Anheuser Bush Inbev brewery - a scary multinational – which, amongst others, has just put itself the new aim of raising its recycling rate (a whooping 98% in 2009) to a staggering 99% in 2012. (Source: STLtoday, Inhabitat, PurposeEnergy and psfk)

The Greenest brewery we’ve encountered, however, is the Australian Coopers.

Their brewery in Adelaide has its own 4.4 MW co-generation powerplant, which produces 15,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions less per year, compared to the regular grid electricity or gas-fired boilers. This plant generates enough power that 75% of it is actually fed back into the general grid.

They also recuperate the plants yearly 50,000 tonnes of steam, used for the heating in the brewery and the evaporation & packaging processes. Excess steam is also used to produce chilled water for the brewing. All the water they use comes from underground aquifers and is purified through reverse osmosis (while taking care not to endanger the long-term viability of the aquifers).

As in the other breweries, the spent grains and “trub” (rich protein waste from the brewing process) are sold as stock feed. Any surplus yeast is sold for the production of other alcoholic beverages. 

Even if you don’t understand all of this, believe us when we say it combines into a very green beer. (Sources: The Recycle Times, The Green Way Up & Coopers) 

It’s interesting to note that, not only do these breweries do a world of good, they’re also making a profit doing it, reducing their energy, waste management and transportation bills by a great deal. Who ever claimed that green was bad for business?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

But sometimes mistakes are made. A small production mistake in a brewery or soda factory generally leads to the dumping of gallons of almost-perfect beer or soda in landfills. This can cost the involved company $100,000 to $200,000.

The New Brunswick Community College, Canada, appalled by this galling waste, might have found a solution for all this surplus beer and soda. They have launched a pilot project to convert all this (sugar-rich) fluid into ethanol. For just the Milco Industries’ soda and beer (which is being used in the pilot) this will mount up to 250,000 to 500,000 gallons of ethanol per year. This is still a very small project though, and the pilot might show that larger quantities are necessary to make the idea economically feasible.

(source: Inhabitat)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

So that’s the content of the bottles, but what about the bottles themselves?

“Well, use them to build eco-friendly temples, of course...!”

or at least, that’s what a group of monks at the Wat Pa Maha Chedoe Kaew temple in Thailand (roughly 370 miles NE from Bangkok) must have thought in 1984 when they started their collection of bottles. 

The “Temple of Million Bottles” (the Wat Lan Kuad) has been built with approximately 1.5 million recycled bottles. They have been used as ‘bricks’ throughout the premises to build not only the temple itself, but also the surrounding facilities, such as toilets, shelters and even a crematorium.

They are committed to the cause, however, and will continue to assemble bottles (and bottle caps, ideal for mosaics) to expand their facilities and, perhaps, build another temple.

(source : The Recycle Times & Inhabitat)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Last, and quite least, for those people who just want literally green beer, there’s the annual Green Beer Day at the Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, on the Thursday before Spring break, on which people drink beer dyed with artificial colouring or natural processes....

It takes all kinds...