Reduce Waste - Drink keg beer

Keg Beer reduces waste? This topic may seem a little bit silly, but if you think about it it's quite true. Drinking keg beer is far more environmentally friendly than drinking beer from bottles or cans. This is really just another version of bulk packaging. And the super special bonus is that every part of the containers used (kegs and glasses) are reusable. Just wash them and you can easily use them again. Even the plastic top on the keg is reusable if you want to get really technical. You can simply bring it back to the brewer (assuming you got it directly from the brewer as is common in Portland), although recycling is probably a more likely option. Now, while cans and bottles are both recyclable, it does take quite a bit of energy to recycle them. It doesn't take as much energy as starting with raw materials, but I'll get to that one later in the month. Also, I noticed since my last keg ran out that I really don't like dealing with bottles.

Anyway, I digress. Let's for a moment assume we're talking about a keg fridge in your home. One argument is that many keg fridges are made from older, energy inefficient refrigerators. My counter argument to that is if you are the type of person to have a keg fridge in the first place, you would most likely have the exact same fridge in your garage full of bottles of beer anyway, so that is kind of a wash. Also, drinking your beer at home has environmental advantages in that you're not driving to the bar and social advantages in that you're not driving home.

There are 15.5 gallons in a keg, which translates to roughly 165 12-oz bottles or cans of beer. So in the same time period, you can either deal with one keg to bring back and a few occasional glasses to wash or you have 165 bottles that you'll need to store for awhile and either bring to a recycling center, recycle curbside, or bring back to the store for your nickel depending on what state you live in. Worst case, like when I lived in Texas in the mid-90's, the only option was to throw it in the trash. Coming from a state where we got a nickel back for the bottles (Iowa), that was a very painful thing to do.

Of course, not everybody wants to have a refrigerator full of beer in the garage (although I can't understand why not). Depending on where you live, a growler or jar of beer to bring home from a local brewpub may be an option. Also, I encourage you to drink draft beer instead of bottled beer when going out. It's good for the environment. I wish that was an option at the casinos in Vegas. Man, they go through a LOT of bottled beer.

Incidentally, does anybody know why bottles are now crushed and recycled rather than reused like they used to be? Remember the white groves around beer and pop bottles? That's from the bottling line when bottles are reused over and over. I haven't seen that for awhile.

Save the planet...one beer at a time.

Jason