Enjoy Your Festivities with Sustainable Alcohol
As the festive break draws ever closer, you might find that you need to stock up on Xmas booze.
After all, you need to make sure that visiting friends and family have their favourite tipple.
Or, if you are visiting friends or family, what better way to say thank you than a nice bottle of something that you can all drink later?
If your gift of choice is sustainable alcohol, that’s even better not just for everyone celebrating with you, but for everyone, everywhere!
Sustainable alcohol really is a thing and if you didn’t know, read on to find out why we need it and where you can find the ‘green stuff’.
Alcohol Through the Ages
Did you know that primates were getting drunk on fermented fruit long before humans existed?
The oldest known brewery was discovered in a cave near Haifa, Israel, in a prehistoric burial site.
Beer residue dating back 13,000 years was discovered, and scientists believe it may have been consumed during a religious feast.
Alcohol residue has been found in containers as far back as the Neolithic period and throughout human history in every culture.
The Romans were responsible for bringing drinks like cider (found only in England) to the rest of the world.
By modern times, alcohol had gone through prohibition, puritanism and more and yet now it is mass-produced.
$1546.6 Billion is spent on alcohol every year and which equates to an unbelievable 446 billion litres consumed every year!
Numbers like that, unfortunately, come with an incredibly large impact.
We bet you can’t even picture what 446 billion litres looks like!
The Environmental Impact of Alcohol
When examining the environmental effects of alcohol, one should start by looking at the effects linked to growing the primary ingredients.
Ingredients include barley for beer, grapes for wine, sugarcane for rum, apples for cider, and agave for tequila.
Growing is damaging as it typically includes harmful fertilisers, extreme water use, as well as any impacts on biodiversity caused by single crop farming.
Add in harvesting, processing and transportation and packaging and you are mounting up some major impact.
After this, there is the manufacturing process to consider.
For instance, both the production of beer and the distillation of spirits require significant quantities of energy.
Worst of all is the amount of packing, storage, and refrigeration devoted to your favourite bottled alcohol.
Carlsberg and The Carbon Trust collaborated to examine the effects of their beer’s supply chain.
What they discovered is that packaging contributes to 40% of the carbon footprint of a typical beer.
That was more than twice as much as the 17 % ascribed to agriculture.
Brewery and distribution emissions came in at 14 and 9%, respectively, followed by refrigeration at 9% and the malting and processing of grains at 6%.
How To Be Sustainable When It Comes to Alcohol
A general rule when it comes to being more sustainable with alcohol is that the higher the alcohol strength, the bigger the carbon footprint.
In other words, beer has a smaller carbon footprint per litre than wine, which is lower than spirits.
Not drinking at all is the best way to lower your footprint, but we would never suggest that – you have to enjoy life!
Although…how about having a month or two a year where you don’t drink – if you do two months, you will reduce your alcohol footprint.
You aren’t just saving your footprint; you are saving money when you don’t drink.
Recycling is also really important.
Make sure that you recycle all bottles and cans.
Buying large containers, rather than small bottles can reduce your packaging waste.
Look at kegs and wine boxes.
How about looking at the website of your preferred alcohol manufacturers?
A number have made commitments to the planet.
Some companies are already on their journey to sustainable alcohol.
Watch out for companies that use locally sourced produce, reuse waste for processing energy and recycle their packaging and bottles to be used again.
As consumer attention turns to climate change, you will find more and more manufacturers producing more planet-friendly tipples.
Some Of Our Favourite Sustainable Alcohol Brands
There are lots of different types of intoxicating beverages, so we have picked our favourite sustainable alcohol in the form of beer, wine and rum.
Hopefully, that gives you enough choice, but you can also get sustainable gin and whisky and more!
Toast Sustainable Ale
Our first favourite is the award-winning artisan beer Toast Ale which is made with leftover fresh bread.
The company uses its profits on projects to help repair the food system!
Since the company launched, they have prevented the emission of more than 48 tonnes of CO2.
They have also prevented over 20 million slices of bread from going to landfills and given £80,000 to charity.
So if you like beer and want to drink with a positive environmental and social impact have a try.
You can even get a 10% discount by signing up for their mailing list.
BIB Sustainable Wine
When it comes to sustainable wine, look no further than BIB Wine, purveyors of fine wine in a box!
BIB Wine’s boxes are ten times more environmentally friendly than their bottled equivalent.
Their Freepost return scheme means the boxes are 100% recyclable.
Because their boxes are flat until wine is added, they are much easier to transport and have a considerably lower footprint.
Founded by four siblings, the company is proud to be part of a movement to make wine part of the solution, not the problem.
Two Drifters Carbon Negative Rum
One of our founders, Richard’s favourite drink is Two Drifters Carbon Negative Rum!
Every stage of the production process at Two Drifters is environmentally friendly.
They use electric vehicles, carbon-neutral packaging, and a distillery that uses only renewable energy.
Two Drifter is also BCorp Certified, is completely transparent, publishes its sustainability report and even provides free Carbon Neutral Delivery!
With a fantastic range of rums to choose from, you can’t go wrong by making your alcohol sustainable with Two Drifters.
Their Overproof Spiced Pineapple Rum is a taste experience.
If you head over to their online shop now and use code PlayItGreen10 at checkout, you can take advantage of an amazing 10% discount.
This offer is available on all their fabulous tipples and remember – please drink responsibly (and sustainably).
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