I like a drink as much as the next man. I am aware though that making, moving and packing alcoholic liquid can’t be terribly good for your carbon footprint.
Alcohol consumption in the UK accounts for at least 1.5% of our greenhouse gas emissions. So for all of us, a significant part of our carbon footprint is caused by having a drink. As a nation we are drinking more these days. Apparently if we reduced the amount we drink to what we did in the 1970s then alcohol would only account for about 0.9% of our total emissions.
However, as a man who enjoys real ale, Guinness, French wine and Scottish whiskey, I’ve had a sneaking suspicion that may have been inadvertently blessed with liking the least bad of the boozes on offer. Am I right to be smug?
It turns out that the main types of alcoholic beverages – beer, wine and spirits – broadly speaking, have a similar impact.
Beer tends to generate more at consumption end: how it’s package, stored and served. You also need at least six pints of water to make one pint of beer. And it takes a fair bit of energy to make.
Wine is fairly low on the impact of its production. It does badly on transport though. Unsurprising when you think how far many of the bottles we drink have come. We don’t grow much wine in the UK after all.
Spirits, need even more water than beer to make and even more energy in the making stage too. They generally require less packaging though, and can be made locally so it evens out.
So on the macro scale, what you drink (if you drink) makes little difference. However, it’s the detail that matters.
Here are some of the things that will make the biggest difference.
Buy local (in a pub)
The most eco beer you can buy is a pint of your local brewery’s real ale. Real ale gets you eco-points as it doesn’t require extra chilling and pasturising during its production – both requiring energy. It also doesn’t need to be refrigerated before it’s served. Refrigeration is one of alcohol’s biggest impacts during the consumption stage.
Local beer hasn’t travelled very far and so clocks up relatively few food miles. And if you enjoy it in the surroundings of your local pub, it comes out of a keg and not a bottle or can. Kegs are reused. So very little packaging is involved. All good.
The same goes for local Cider.
Similarly, locally made wine is – ecologically speaking – the best wine you can buy. Obviously we don’t grow much of it in the UK – although we might start to as our climate warms – so if you drink a lot of wine moving to France is a ecologically sound option!
Buy foreign lagers made in the UK
If you really can’t stand good old British beer and want a pint of larger, have a look at the label. Many are brewed in the UK under license. Kronenbourg 1664, Grolsh, Carlsberg Export and Fosters are all brewed here. So they haven’t necessarily come far either. Most beers in the UK have travelled less than 600 miles. Again, drinking it in the pub means that less packaging.
Unfortunately (for me), the country that imports most beer into the UK is Ireland. The majority of this is of course Guinness. Bugger.
And if you do buy Guinness, the regular stuff obviously requires less refrigeration than Guinness Extra Cold.
Buy organic (probably)
As with everything, buying organic is better environmentally (beer and wine). Making things like pesticides is a very energy-intensive process. And the impact they have on soil and biodiversity is not good either. There are lower levels of sulphur involved in organic production, so organic wine and beers are apparently less likely to give you a hangover. Which, unless you like a pounding head, is another good reason to drink organic.
However, there are very few hops and barley grown in the UK so many British organic beers are often made with imported ingredients. A lot of them come from New Zealand, which of course means that they’ve clocked up quite a few miles… One of the few breweries that produces locally grown and brewed organic beer is Suffolk’s St Peters Brewery. It’s pretty good stuff too.
On the other hand, New Zealand organic wines – despite having come a long way – are actually better environmentally than intensively produced French wines. So it doesn’t always follow that booze from the other side of the world has the most environmental impact.
Biodynamic wines take organic one step further. The idea is to treat the whole farm as an ecosystem. It’s apparently catching on as it’s considered to make extremely good wines.
Buy beer in cans not bottles
There’s not a huge amount in it but cans require fractionally less energy to make than bottles. Making aluminium cans from scratch is one of the most energy intensive things you can do. However, we’re pretty good at recycling aluminium cans and turning old cans into new is a relatively efficient process. More efficient than turning recycled glass into new bottles. If we reused bottles, that would be better but we’re not doing that yet.
That said a local beer in a bottle is better than a lager in a can. And if you’re in a pub, go for draft, rather than a bottle. It’ll be cheaper too.
Drink whiskey (not gin or vodka)
Gin, whiskey and vodka make up two-thirds of the spirits we drink in the UK. Grain natural spirit – the basis for gin and vodka – uses two-to-three times as much energy to make as whiskey. A lot of vodka is also imported and has therefore travelled further. Conversely we end up exporting 90% of the Scotch we make.
Non-grain spirits – like rum and brandy – are also generally imported. Brandy is made from wine and so we don’t make it here.
If you buy vodka or gin, have a look at the label to see if it’s made in the UK.
Make your own
Making wine is a very low impact process. And you can make it from practically anything. You can also put it in your own bottles and reuse them. Making your own beer is also good, although economies of scale mean that local ale in a pub is probably better.
Drink less
Sad though it is to say, the best way to reduce the impact of the booze you drink is to drink less of it. Making alcohol is unfortunately a very intensive process. That said, so is making Coca Cola and orange juice so if you drink a similar amount of those instead, it’s probably not much better.
So it appears that I can be thankful that I’m not terribly keen on Vodka. But in future, much as I love it, I might find myself shunning a pint of the black stuff in favour of a pint of real ale from up the road. I may also find myself drinking in a pub more. I’ll drink to that.
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