The Ugly Truth about Packaging
The need to tackle glass and packaging waste has never been more critical than it is now. The report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has highlighted that the continued rise in global temperatures will have severe consequences, such as more frequent heatwaves, droughts, and floods. The production and disposal of materials used for packaging are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, which exacerbate the climate crisis. Glass, in particular, has a notorious track record for contributing to global warming due to the extremely high temperatures and energy required for its production as well as for its recycling.
Despite the beer industry's efforts to reduce packaging and glass waste and promote recycling, unfortunately, it remains a serious issue to address in order to save our planet. In fact, alcoholic beverages alone contribute 0.6% of the Global Warming Potential impact, with packaging accounting for 40% of a beverage's total carbon footprint.
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Wondering how? Let’s explore.
If we assume that flying by commercial plane causes an average of 10 kg of CO2 emissions per mile, the global CO2 emissions from glass production, which is estimated to be 95 million tonnes, is roughly equal to the emissions from flying 9.4 billion miles on a commercial jet.
If we consider the weight of a typical glass bottle to be around 500 grams, then 12.3 million tons of glass generated in the United States in 2018 would equate to approximately 24.6 billion glass bottles. If you lined up 24.6 billion glass bottles end to end, they would stretch over 28 million miles, which is more than enough to circle the Earth more than 1,100 times.
Solutions
Glass is a key component of the global beer supply chain, and reducing its carbon footprint through every step is crucial for emissions mitigation. And aware of the severity of the issue, the beer industry has taken important steps to achieve this.
Greener bottles
One solution is the use of greener bottles made of lightweight glass. Lightweight glass bottles, usually weighing around 420 grams, have a carbon footprint that is about 22% less than that of traditional glass bottles. But a game changer in the industry, AB InBev has innovated its glass bottles and has recently developed the world's lightest longneck glass beer bottle, reducing the weight from 180 to 150 grams and cutting CO2 emissions by 17 percent per bottle. The company indicated its packaging constituted on average 50 percent of its product carbon footprint back in 2021.
Recycling
But that's not the only way to reduce emissions. Recycling is another crucial factor, and it has been shown that glass has a strong case for recycling due to its indefinite recyclability. The use of recycled glass can avoid process emissions released during the production of virgin glass, leading to significant CO2 emission savings of up to 40 percent. In fact, the potential for reducing emissions through greener bottles and glass recycling is significant. In 2018, the United States recycled 31.3 percent of its glass containers, representing 3.1 million tons of recycled glass containers.
The beer industry has taken important steps in this direction. Heineken, an industry leader Dutch multinational brewing company that recycles glass bottles through years, has taken a step to make its packaging more sustainable two years ago, and began experiments for its new project aiming to produce low carbon bottles using recycled glass. Moreover, the growth in demand for glass makes it an invaluable material for a future circular economy where waste no longer exists, and products are recycled indefinitely.
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Dark side of glass recycling
However, global recycling rates for glass still are not at the level we need them to be, and it's evident in the data. According to the World Economic Forum, about 110 million glass bottles are thrown away every day in the US, and only one-third of them are recycled. This issue leads to a staggering amount of greenhouse gases released during the recycling process, causing a carbon footprint equal to over 1,650 return flights to London in 2020 alone.
Thankfully, there are efforts to combat this problem, such as Owens-Brockway's pledge to invest $11 million in reducing emissions from their recycling facility. And Pernod Ricard is also doing their part by partnering with ecoSpirits to implement a closed-loop distribution system in Hong Kong and Singapore, reducing carbon emissions and glass waste.
However, to create a truly waste-free world, we need to address the problem at its source by eliminating the generation of waste. One way to do this is to promote the use of reusable kegs for beer. Unlike bottles, kegs can be reused multiple times, making them a much more sustainable option in the short and long run. Deloitte's life cycle analysis for The Steel Keg Association found that steel kegs in the US prevent six billion single-use containers from becoming waste each year, conserving enough energy to power the average American household for over a year!
By switching to reusable steel kegs for draft beer, an average sports bar can save over 13,000 pounds of single-use packages from ending up in landfills. Not only does this help the environment, but it also reduces greenhouse gas emissions by around 5,000 kg of CO2 equivalents, equivalent to providing electricity to a home for over 6 months.
Let's do our part in creating a more sustainable future by choosing reusable kegs for our beer!
