I tried getting drunk in an eco-friendly way: How to help save the … – inews

If there are two things the British love, it’s drinking heavily and moaning about the weather. But, given that climate change is only going to make things worse on the weather front, something about downing imported lager while lamenting it feels a bit off.

A 2018 study at Imperial College London found an imported can of lager generated more than 750g of carbon dioxide equivalent (the units that carbon emissions are measured in), with the power used by retailers also contributing to energy usage — the big fridges and bright lights in Tesco come at a cost. Another earlier study showed that alcoholic beverages represent 1.5 per cent of the UK’s emissions.

The team of Imperial scientists were using this information to justify creating a carbon-neutral beer (CO Brew they called it) but for someone like me – both an enthusiastic boozehound and crippled with climate anxiety – is there more I can do than just drink their lager? It would be nice to be able to drink heavily (or lightly, I guess that’s an option too) while minimising my effect on the environment. But how?

What to know about wine

Actual production aside, the two biggest ways drinks contribute carbon emissions are in their packaging and transport. While an unexpected positive of climate change is that British grapes are better than they used to be (which is a thin silver lining on a very large, very dark cloud), most wine is still imported, so for wine enthusiasts, packaging is the area to focus on if you want to try and be more eco-conscious.

“Something most wine consumers aren’t aware of is that 40 per cent of the wine industry’s carbon footprint is from glass bottles,” says Rob Malin, CEO of Italian wine company When In Rome, who sell all their wine in bag-in-box and canned format. The brand’s red wine comes in a cardboard bottle — a bag in a box but with the exact dimensions of a standard glass bottle, a weirdly fun object. It’s of course lighter and less breakable than a glass bottle.

But, as Malin admits, the bag-in-box format isn’t perfect. It has a plastic liner and, due to a higher oxygen transmission rate than glass’s zero, isn’t as suitable for long-term storage — it’s not something that would work for a priceless Merlot intended to sit in the cellar for decades, but with around 95 per cent of wine sold in the UK being drunk within 48 hours of purchase, it’s a minimal issue for the vast majority of drinkers.

“Everybody’s trying to perfect a paper bottle lined with something more sustainable than plastic, and until that works, this imperfect solution is the best we have,” Malin claims.

Given we’ve all spent the last few years focusing so much on cutting down on single-use plastics that the idea of a plastic bag being better than a glass bottle can seem hard to believe, but it comes down to the quantity of materials involved — a thin plastic liner versus a heavy glass bottle. Generally, the bigger and heavier the packaging, the worse it is.

Cans, though, avoid plastics entirely and, unlike both plastic and glass, can be recycled essentially infinitely without a drop in quality. When glass wine bottles are recycled, they don’t get made into new wine bottles, due to inconsistent colours and often visible imperfections. A recycled bottle is much more likely to end up as home insulation with wine companies vastly preferring virgin glass.

“Regular wine packaged in a glass bottle produces about four times as much carbon as it does in a can, and with sparkling wine — due to being packaged in heavier and thicker glass bottles — that rises to five,” says Malin. “Wine is sometimes imported in a relatively environmentally-friendly way then placed in glass bottles once it arrives in the UK, with the footprint of the container negating the whole thing.”

Canned wine is a more and more common sight though. Waitrose recently replaced all their single-serving wine bottles with cans, saving an estimated 320 tonnes of packaging annually.

I’m no sommelier but all the canned wine I try seems just as good as anything I’ve had from a bottle. But generally my drink of choice is beer.

What to know about beer

An increasing number of bigger beer companies tout their environmental credentials — Brewgooder, Jubel and Toast are among those available in supermarkets with B Corp status. To be certified as a B Corp, companies must demonstrate, among other things, high standards of environmental performance. So this is something you can look out for.

But the most dramatic way of reducing the impact of a delicious beer is to forego supermarket shelves entirely and go straight to the source: local breweries.

As Tim Hunt, director of Ethical Consumer Magazine, explains: “The good news is it’s really easy to find decent locally brewed beer and they are often better than the rather bland offerings served up by multinationals. Going for beer from local breweries puts money back into the local economy and cuts down on the food miles and thereby carbon impacts.”

Fortunately enough, there are around 3,000 breweries in the UK. There are several within a half-hour’s cycle of my house, and sourcing beer directly from them (many allow you to bring your own containers) means cutting out several stages of packaging, distribution and long-term storage, all of which add up emissions-wise.

Unless obligatory carbon labelling or taxation comes in, we’re unlikely to reach a point where drinks packaging has a carbon emissions figure on it next to the volume and ABV — currently everything along those lines is opt-in and fairly fudgeable. So knowing that your beer is sourced locally is a good place to start.

And while replacing the ease of plucking an ice-cold can of Kronenbourg from the fridge with an hour-long cycle, half of it with a savagely-heavy rucksack full of booze, isn’t necessarily something I’m likely to be doing all the time, but it’ll get get me out of the house, and perhaps balance out some of the less-great health effects of drinking.

In conclusion, the more clear consumers make it that they want to be able to get absolutely wrecked in a planet-friendly manner, the more green boozing options will be available.