Sustainability Project Initiation

Zero-waste beer through home brewing 

Background: I recently moved into a new apartment and for the first time in my life have no easy access to recycling. In order to be a good and responsible citizen on the earth, I decided to only drive to the recycling center once a month (to save gas etc). During this time, my roommate and I accumulated about 45 glass beer bottles which are now residing under our sink. I usually recycle every two weeks and never fully realized how much glass I use each month (as a college student, the vast majority being beer bottles). Visually the result was eye-opening and a little disturbing. I crunched the math and found that my roommate and I will likely dispose of ~540 bottles during our 1 year lease. Yikes! Considering most beer bottling companies only utilize 12.5% recycled glass 1 it accounts for a lot of waste. When multiplied over an entire college campus the numbers are astounding.

Home brewing would help to conserve resources and energy by reducing the number of bottles/cans produced, transportation costs of moving ingredients, materials, and products around the country, as well as packaging, labeling, and numerous other aspects which will be described in further detail in future blog posts.

 New Belgium Brewing Co. 37.6% of calculated carbon footprint due to glass bottling
.http://www.newbelgium.com/sustainability/stories/14-02-28/A-Snapshot-of-our-Footprint.aspx

To minimize my own contribution to this aspect of college culture, I propose to attempt to brew my own beer, and bottle it using the beer bottles I currently have under my sink. I would like to reduce my carbon footprint by removing myself as entirely as possible from the current brew company infrastructure and to also put my creativity to the test to find ways of re-using any by products of the brewing process.

Goals:
 • Minimize glass and aluminum waste discarded as a result of home beer consumption.
 • Minimize total transportation costs by buying all ingredients and brewing materials locally (I live directly across the street from Butler Winery and can even walk brewing equipment to my house).
 • Achieve zero waste in the brewing process through composting or baking with spent grains and
 using the water required to brew for my garden.

 Additional goals:
 • Beer brewing start up using previously used equipment
 • Sharing the products of my experiment to encourage others to participate in similar actions

Impact/Statistics: Statistics show that the average college student drinks 7.44 alcoholic beverages per week 2. Even if we attribute only half of that to beer (bottled or canned) that accounts for 15,475,200 beer containers/year on the IU Bloomington campus alone. *Any opinions/statistics on if this is a high or low estimate? Extended over all college campuses in the U.S. the numbers become absurd. The U.S. Department of Education "Fast Facts Enrollment3" documented an enrollment of 13 million full-time college students in 2011. That would be equivalent to 2,514,720,000 beer containers/year for college student alone (assuming half of all alcohol consumption was beer). Even if every bottle and can was recycled (highly doubtful) it still requires additional energy and resources to make new bottles.

Home brewing could decrease these numbers substantially while also cutting down on additional import and transportation costs of purchasing mass produced beer, packaging, manufacture, while allowing you to make the best beer for your palate!

Metrics:

• Recording total glass and aluminum accumulation over the next few months.
• Tracking additional wastes that result from by-products to the brewing process, such as water and spent wheat. 

1 New Belgium Brewing Co.http://www.newbelgium.com/sustainability/stories/14-02-28/A-Snapshot-of-our-Footprint.aspx.

2 Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Studies-http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394678/
3 NCES (2014). U.S. Department of Education  "Fast Facts Enrollment"