The First Sip of Glorious Home-Brewed Sustainable Beer

At last!

It took a long time to get here, to the first sip of my own beer. It was quite a process, more than I had anticipated but worth it!

A Witbier..soon to be followed by Octoberfest just in time for Halloweeen!

The hardest part the last few weeks has been waiting, seeing the rows of beautifully carbonated beverages and knowing that I had to just let them sit there for 2 more weeks. The first batch- the Witbier was not made as sustainably as I would have liked, but I was unprepared, trying to do something for the very first time and more worried about getting a drinkable concoction rather than the details of saving or reusing everything. It was also difficult because I was simply unfamiliar with the process and what elements of the process could be adapted to make the process more environmentally friendly. The process has made me much more environmentally conscious and I feel much more aware on a daily basis of what kind of resources I use just to wash dishes or cook dinner.

It's also incredible that there was such a huge difference between my first batch of beer and my second. The second time I was familiar with the process and was able to plan ahead accordingly, utilize resources to their fullest potential and to achieve almost all of my personal project goals. I have not purchased any beer in 2 months, have stuck to re-using the bottles I already had accumulated, I have re-purposed spent grains to make cookies and granola for the class, re-used grey water to wash my bathtub and clean water to wash dishes and water plants. I borrowed about half of my equipment from a friend who brews and we now alternate the equipment, saving us both money and limiting the amount of plastic and other resources consumed.

The experience of brewing and sharing my new found knowledge with friends and folks has been terrific and has encouraged me to continue brewing and experimenting and keeping it as sustainable as possible. As I share bottles with friends, the trade off for free beer is to return the bottle to me...plus any addition bottles they may have lying around destined for the trash.

I have loved this project and can't wait for my next batch to be ready...Octoberfest I'm ready for you!

p.s. The Witbier is awesome and I will share with anyone who wants to try, just let me know :)

Housing and Community Development

3.5 Million Homeless, 18.9 Million Empty Houses

There seems to be a simple solution

The Housing and Community Development chapter in Roseland struck a chord with me as I recently read an article with some staggering implications of the subject of housing in America. Information gathered by the Urban Institute and Fox Business estimate that there are 18.9 million vacant homes in the USA.  The number of homeless is America is estimated at 3.5 million. See the full article here. How is this possible!? Two legitimate national concerns could be solved in one beneficial transaction. 

It is completely understandable to resist simply giving away empty homes, a great deal of people struggling to pay their own rent would likely resent the ‘freebies,’ yet something needs to be done with the houses. Houses can last for decades or even centuries if built well and continually maintained. Without maintenance, houses quickly fall into disrepair, become uninhabitable and a detriment to the community, as well as a miserable testament to squandered resources.  It seems to me that this issue should be one that politicians, economists, and activists could unite on and strive to find a solution that is beneficial to all.

 Utah Strives to Solve Homelessness

Utah has attempted to find that balance.  The state government began a program in 2005 with a goal of eradicating homelessness in the state entirely by 2015. By 2013, homelessness had declined by 78%. Their incredible goal may be attainable after all! 

The Utah project provides free housing to homeless people and also provides each person with a social worker to aid them in finding a job or to solve health/personal issues.  Once jobs are found, the renters are required to pay 30% of their income- the percentage considered to be affordable housing in the Roseland chapter.  The government created this program after estimating that the annual cost of providing emergency room care and jail time per homeless person in Utah was estimated to be $16,670. Providing free housing and social worker is around $11,000/person. 

Not only has homelessness decreased, community development has become stronger, property values have been steadily increasing, and the taxpayers are actually saving money by funding  housing rather than ER and jail time.  The trail period of the program has not been completed and the total results are yet to be determined, but it seems like no one has lost, yet many have gained- a rare Pareto efficiency for all those econ minded folks.

Homelessness in a sea of empty houses is not only a problem in America but is being faced in Spain and the U.K. as well as many other nations. However, the struggles of housing and community development is not restricted to developed countries in which we have simply continued to build and build and build even if there is no one to buy the houses. One of the most creative ways to solve the crisis of homelessness in underdeveloped countries is show in the video below.

Constructing houses from discarded plastic bottles

  

The Samarpan Foundation used discarded water bottles filled with sand to construct a schoolhouse for local children in India. The schoolhouse encouraged many other similar housing projects in rural villages in Africa, India, and central America and while made almost completely from recycled materials, are aesthetically pleasing when completed. I’m not sure how architecturally sound these structures are…it seems to be debatable, but the idea is innovative and has greatly helped the community by providing schools and housing while encouraging community development by engaging many residents in the construction project.  It also helps to re-purpose plastic bottles that would usually end up in a landfill or ocean.

 It is interesting to see how similar problems can be solved in a variety of different ways depending on context, available resources, local policies and politics, economic status, support, and creativity! I hope that there are many more innovative ways of developing more affordable and secure housing for all, and that the U.S.A can make a positive shift toward solving its own issues concerning homelessness while decreasing the number of empty houses across the country.

Sources:

Toward Sustainable Communities. Mark Roseland. 2012.

Sustainable Brewing: Spent Grains to Cookies!

Baking with Spent Grains

"Spent grain can constitute as much as 85% of a brewery's total by-product."- Kay Witkiewicz 'Sustainable Uses of Spent Grains'

Grains such as malt, wheat, and barely give beer its wonderful flavor and color. Grains are placed in a nylon bag and dunked into hot water to soak just as you would make tea. After an hour or so, the hot water is aromatic and on its way to becoming beer. But what to do with the ~2 lbs of spent grain now that sugar, nutrients, and proteins have been extracted? 

                                         

          Soaking grains in hot water extracts the flavor and color of the grains without introducing bits of grain

My first brewing session was a disorganized, nerve racking, late night adventure followed by 8am classes and long days. Wet grains quickly became moldy grains and they had to be tossed, an unfortunate waste that could have been used to make cookies, bread, cakes, waffles, granola or any number of delicious treats! As a part of zero-waste brewing I was better prepared for my second batch and was ready to bake.

                            A delicious way to incorporate a byproduct of the brewing process into brewing routine!

You guys already tasted my first attempt at baking with spent grains, and I think the cookies turned out pretty well. The 40+ cookies and granola I made disappeared within in the day so I'm taking that as a compliment. They were also super healthy and accidentally, also vegan. Next time I am psyched to try spent grain waffles!

Here are some other sustainable options that small-mid sized breweries around the country are doing with their spent grains. 

Some of my favorites are:

Full Sail Brewery: Provides farmers in the Hood Valley with 160 tons of spent grains a week, diverting 97% of wastes from the landfill.

Standing Stone Brewing Company- Ashland, OR

Feeds more than 5 dozen chickens and hopes to use the spent grains as fertilizer that will help them grow fruits and vegetables in the future

 The Brewery at Blackberry Farm Wallant, TN

Use grain to feed chickens, sheep, llamas and pigs which provide eggs, milk, wool, and meat for patrons

Alaskan Brewing Company: Designed a broiler fueled entirely by spent grain that will lead to “more than 60% reduction in fuel oil use in the first year, and, with moderate growth assumptions, this transfers to a fuel savings of nearly 1,500,000 gallons of oil over the next 10 years.”

Bottling Time!

Round 1, almost complete!

After 2.5 weeks of impatiently waiting for fermentation to finish, today is bottling day! I was able to find a friend who brews and was willing to lend me all the bottling supplies I needed, reducing the plastic bucket, tubing, bottle capper demand in the world by one. A few more awesome friends were happily lured into helping with the promise of freshly brewed beer. 

I was more prepared this time and was able to save all the water used to clean bottling equipment to do my dishes and to wash brewing equipment in preparation for the next round! The biggest bonus of the night was that the huge accumulation of glass bottles under my sink is finally in use and no longer a despairing reminder of wasteful behavior.

45 bottles fewer in the trash or recycling.

45 bottles of witbier bottled and ready to pop in 1-2 weeks!

               Ta-da! First attempt at sustainable beer-making is looking good!

Because only about 12.5% of glass is recycled, being able to re-use existing bottles is the best way to extend sustainability because it reduces demand for glass bottles and re-purposes them, thereby extending their lifecycle. Of course, the entire beer industry needs to be re-vamped to make the process more sustainable. Here are some innovative breweries who are re-thinking the process and increasing their sustainability and environmental awareness.

Steamwhistle Brewing-Canada:  Re-uses each bottle up to 45 times by producing a bottle from 30% more glass and emphasizing to customers importance of returning bottles. The logo is also painted onto the bottle to reduce the amount of trees processed to make labels, eliminates toxic ink, varnish and glue- common environmental hazards.  http://www.steamwhistle.ca/ourbeer/greenInitiatives.php

Sierra Nevada: “In 2012, 99.8% of solid waste was diverted from the landfill through creative measures that encourage reuse, recycling or composting of waste." They also developed a new compost system that uses organic waste from brewing to feed their hop and barley fields, restaurant garden, and employee garden. http://www.sierranevada.com/brewery/about-us/sustainability#/resource-recovery

P.S. For anyone who is wondering why I am not just circumventing containers all together and tapping beer directly from a keg…the price tag is HUGE! Not only is a mini keg unit going to run you at least $200 with CO2 tubes, regulator etc, it also requires a separate refrigeration unit, energy to cool it, and considerable additional equipment that is only less wasteful if you brew often and have quite a few brews all refrigerating at one time.

Innovative Transportation Planning in Buenos Aires

 Re-Designing the World's Widest Avenue! 

Avenida 9 de Julio, Buenos Aires, Argentina:Guinness Book of Record holder for world's widest avenue until 2006. http://www.inautonews.com/10-busiest-junctions-in-the-world#.VDGXWPldX_o

Buenos Aires had a major problem with traffic congestion. 3 million people, 200,000 commuters and a perpetually clogged 20 lane avenue leading to the city center. 

Citizens demanded better traffic flow and expected that the iconic 20 lane Avenida 9 de Julio would be expanded to accommodate the increase in automobile traffic. Instead, city planners focused on creating an innovative solution that addressed the root causes of traffic congestion in the area.

Video interviewing city planners about the struggles and triumphs of re-designing Avenida 9 de Julio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaBNNHLzBhI#t=119

Last week our class focused on waste reduction and determined that the most desirable outcomes presented in Mark Roseland's hierarchy of waste diagram (pg.96) were produced by rethinking and redesigning common processes, i.e. reducing waste by not creating any in the first place. I was curious to how this concept could be applied to transportation systems in some of the world's most crowded metropolises. After a little digging, I found Avenida 9 de Julio.

The proposed plan to reduce traffic congestion was met incredible amounts of opposition from all sources- citizens, businesses, and political leaders, but garnered the stubborn planners the 2014 Sustainable Transportation Award. Here’s a breakdown of how one of the world’s largest cities used innovation to create a transport system focused on accessibility while balancing maximum transport choices, cost efficiency, and environmental sensitivity utilizing many of the ideas presented in Roseland’s 'Traffic, Mobility, and Accessibility' chart (pg.130)1.  

Avenida 9 de Julio in 2014- after re-designing its famous avenue

https://www.itdp.org/2014-sustainable-transport-award-finalist-buenos-aires-argentina/

•  4 of the 20 congested vehicular lanes were set aside solely for buses- speeding up mass transit efficiency by 50% and car transport by 20%.2
•  Laws require buses to only travel on the main road, allowing over 100 blocks of side streets to be transformed into pedestrian and bike friendly spaces.
• 130km of bike lanes were added, increasing bike commuting from “almost nothing” to 12%3.
• The new efficiency of mass transit travel is predicted to shift the already 80 million bus commuters to 120 million by 20154.

After reading Roseland’s chapter on transportation planning and traffic management highlighting dynamic changes various cities are implementing to create positive change, I was admittedly a little underwhelmed after reading about Buenos Aires grand new design. I was not very impressed with the scale of innovation and viewed it as just a shift in resource usage and allocation. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that innovation does not require new inventions, but can be a change in perception or creative re-design as emphasized in Roseland’s Hierarchy of Waste diagram (pg.96).   

With the expense and time that re-designing transportation systems requires in large cities, often the best choices for major change are the simplest.  The planners of Avenida 9 de Julio did some serious re-thinking and the benefits of their design cascaded through the city, spurring a domino effect of sustainability. By changing the purpose of lanes in a highway system, traffic congestion decreased and transport efficiency increased. More people began to ride the bus because the design changes made it faster than driving a car. As buses were removed from side streets, traffic decreased and more people felt comfortable walking or biking. With the establishment of bike lanes, a shift in social norms occurred, and bikes were no longer only associated with the poorest of citizens but as a simple and healthy form of commuting.

Side streets converted into pedestrian friendly walking streets
Credit: http://www.citiscope.org/

Bike racks now populate Buenos Aires as more people are encouraged to bike
Credit: http://www.daveheidebrecht.com//

While the changes made in Buenos Aires may not seem ground breaking or extremely innovative at first glance, they garnered impressive results and are predicted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5,600 tons per year- the same results as taking 4,300 cars off the road for an entire year2.

What other innovative transportation systems have you heard about? How effective is this type of transportation innovation compared to new engineering technology and ideas presented in Toward Sustainable Communities? Do you think that this type of change possible in other mega- cities that have more elaborate infrastructure (over and under passes etc)?

1. Toward Sustainable Communities. Mark Roseland. 2012.
2. The Institute of Transportation and Development Policy: https://www.itdp.org/2014-sustainable-   transport- award- finalist-buenos-aires-argentina/
3. Cityscope.org: http://www.citiscope.org/story/2014/how-buenos-aires-unclogged-its-most-iconic-street
4. Sustainable Transport Award 2014 Winner: Buenos Aires Interview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaBNNHLzBhI#t=119

3.