How green beer is going to save the world.
By Corey Hill (GlobalExchange.org)
(From issue 8.)

Mention “green beer,” and the first thing that comes to mind is likely a garish concoction sloshing over the rim of a giant plastic cup, watery beer slurred with food coloring, a vague memory of a questionable libation accompanied by visions of questionable acts you committed on that notorious day in March.

But let’s rethink the term. Green doesn’t have to be artificial – think recycling, biking to work, and turning off the lights when you’re not in the bathroom. Green living is bubbling to the forefront of our collective consciousness, and unfortunately for concerned beer lovers, a great deal about beer is bad for the environment. In fact, studies estimate that a single six-pack of beer produces over six pounds of carbon dioxide emissions in its life cycle. Six pounds, for purposes of comparison, is a small dog, or an exceptionally large guinea pig. Whichever mammal, that’s a lot of carbon.

Every step of the process is marred by environmental hazards. Grains (both the starch source and hops) are sprayed with petroleum-based pesticides and harvested by oil fed machines. Once the grains hit the brewery, every machine inside the building sucks up juice, and a lot of it. In the United States, fifty percent of that electricity is generated by burning coal. Then there is the little problem of wastewater: the typical brewery produces between two and six gallons (a large kitchen sink) of wastewater for every gallon of beer produced. Throw in disposable packaging, and a distribution system reliant on oil driven trucks, and you can see why your average beer is a strain on the ecosystem.

I’m troubled. I like the ozone layer as much as the next person, and I certainly don’t want to see it eviscerated just to satiate my powerful lust for pilsners and lagers. But I also don’t want to live on a planet without beer. So you see the conundrum.

Thankfully, solutions are forthcoming. Clever thinkers, with a mind for both the palette and the planet, have crafted the answers that make it possible to reconcile a love of all things beer with a love of living on an Earth that is inhabitable to humans.

Certified organic growing techniques for hops and barley make for a pesticide free product, because strict regulations ensure a sustainable harvest. The North American Organic Brewers Festival, billed as the largest event of its kind in the world, boasts more than forty brewers in its lineup – a good cross section of a rapidly growing sector of the market. What’s more, many brewers source local ingredients which, aside from avoiding petroleum based pesticides, also cut down on the distance the hops and barley travel before being processed. Good news, glaciers.

And as for electrical needs, brewers are at the forefront of the alternative energy game, ditching coal in favor of cleaner options. In fact, when New Belgium Brewery decided to power their brewery completely by wind in 1999, they became the world’s largest single consumer of wind power (at the time) and the first brewery to be completely wind powered. They got buy-in from the whole staff, too. Even though they knew it would cut into their profits, the entire team voted ‘yes’ on wind power.

Other companies have since followed suit, adopting a clean mixture of solar, wind, and water power to meet the energy needs of their facilities. And as for that wastewater, clogging up municipal water treatment systems, well, there’s a solution for that now, too.  Methane capture—the process by which organic matter in wastewater is converted to methane, which is then burned to release electricity—is fast becoming a popular choice for brewers hoping to save money and supplement their energy needs.

Foster Brewing Company of Australia uses a microbial fuel cell—basically a battery in which bacteria munch on water-soluble brewing wastes like sugar and starch—to stay green. The fuel cell converts the chemical energy produced by the feeding bacteria into electrical energy.

Spent grains don’t just make electricity, either. They also make happy cows. Though stovepipe hats and territorial disputes with Great Britain are now vanished fixtures of life from the 1800s, there is another nineteenth century tradition that is coming back to the fore: feeding spent grains to livestock. Operations of all sizes, from tiny Brooklyn Brewery in New York to Colorado giant Coors are making money by selling spent grains to farmers. Grains in cow stomachs are kept out of wastewater.

Once the beer’s made, it’s gotta go somewhere. And usually that somewhere is into a bottle or can, and then into a box or case. Moving forward from recycled packaging, a radical idea has emerged: no packaging. Not only that, but no trucks. No packing plus no trucks equals zero emissions. A simple enough formula—and that’s exactly what several breweries are doing. In Chicago, Goose Island Brewery makes a local only, draft only beer that is only available in Chicago (hence the term ‘local only’).  If you’re not in Chicago, and you’re not at a pub, you can’t get it. Chicago locavores rejoice! Everyone else, remember this next time you’re in Chicago.

Along those same lines…why not bring your own container to fill up when it’s time for beer? Enter the growler, a half gallon glass container that has been around in one form or another for thousands of years. Show up with an empty growler, leave with a full one, and you remove the need for landfill-clogging packaging and ozone shredding transport.  Driven by an interest in sustainability and locally sourced products (and good cheap beer), the idea is gaining traction in cities with well developed beer cultures. The only stumbling blocks preventing a wider acceptance of growlers are liquor laws, which vary widely by city, county, and state. Here in the Bay Area, the issue is a little tricky, but you can find bars and breweries that deal in growlers if you’re willing to do a little research (Pssst: You can get growlers of delicious beer in San Francisco at Magnolia Pub and the Beach Chalet). If ever there was a reason to get active in politics, agitating for greater acceptance of growlers is it.

From now on, I’m going to be doing a color check on all the beer I drink. With every shade available, there’s no reason it can’t be green, all year round. Plastic cups and clovers optional.