REDUCING YOUR IMPACT
Sad to say that brewing beer has an impact on the environment.
From growing the raw ingredients to the minute you lift the glass to your lips, there are a whole host of environmental issues that come into play: from greenhouse gases and waste to single use plastic and wildlife conservation.
But don’t despair! There is a type of beer which has a much lower impact than the rest: cask beer.
Packaging is the biggest culprit: 40% of all carbon dioxide emissions released by brewing beer comes from the packaging. Plus 22% is from the raw materials, 18% from retail and home refrigeration, 9% from manufacturing, 7% from retail and 4% from waste disposal.
WHAT MAKES CASK BEER SO MUCH MORE SUSTAINABLE?
Casks and kegs are both types of barrel used to transport and store beer, and both are re-used multiple times. But beer needs help to flow out of these barrels, along pipes and through the tap/hand pump into your glass:
- in kegs, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide are artificially added to create the pressure needed to push the beer out. When the keg is refilled, these gases get released into the atmosphere and contribute to the build-up of the greenhouse gases causing climate change. Kegs also have to be chilled and the refrigeration process uses a lot of energy, generating more carbon dioxide
- cask beer, however, ferments inside the cask because it isn’t filtered or pasteurised (unlike keg beer), so carbon dioxide is made naturally and this creates the internal pressure which pushes the beer out of the barrel. Cask beer is also served at room temperature so doesn’t need chilling.
Hopefully, you can see how cask beers have the least environmental impact. Their storage causes a third less carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere compared to a non-returnable bottle, for example, because of the amount of packaging, transport, environmental cost of manufacturing and disposal of the bottle.
WHY DO WE SELL BEER IN CANS?
Beer intended for you to drink at home is now sold in cans instead of bottles because they have a much lower environmental footprint. Aluminium cans are lighter, smaller and don’t break in transit – unlike glass bottles - meaning fewer lorry loads to transport more beer resulting in lower fuel consumption and, therefore, fewer carbon dioxide emissions.
Aluminium can contain 75-80% recycled content. also be recycled endlessly, and only uses 5% of the energy needed to make a brand-new can. This is why we canned bottles in 2021.
