United States
United Kingdom
COP26 is firmly underway in Glasgow, and let’s hope it’s not another cop out from our world leaders. In all seriousness, the next 2 weeks are momentous for the future of our beloved planet and if the leaders of the world stick to their pledge to reverse deforestation, we are fully behind them.
For those who don’t know, COP26 is the 26th annual Conference of Parties, bringing together almost every country in the world to hold talks on how to tackle climate change, together.
So how does this impact you? If, like us, you love drinking beer, climate change could directly impact your favourite social activity. By the end of the century, prices of beer are set to significantly rise as a response to water shortages, droughts and extreme heat on barley crops.
In the UK, the Environment Agency warns about countrywide water shortages by 2050 if further action is not taken to conserve water. Around 95% of a pint is made up of water, (surprising we know!) so shortages are definitely not in our best interest.
Water in brewing
Traditional brewing methods use between three and seven barrels of water to produce one barrel of beer, which by our calculations is a lot of water wastage. On top of this, we then need to consider the impact of importing this beer into the UK, reportedly 88 million pints were imported from outside the EU into the UK in 2019.
The Fresh Beer Community has definitely been thirsty. Within our Pinter Packs, we’ve shipped 202,786.5L of liquid to enable the consumption of 1.3 million litres of beer. Due to our minimal packaging we’ve been able to reduce CO2e, the weight saved of shipping in this format is 1,300,000kg vs 202,786kg (with Pinter Packs), saving 123.0kg of CO2e.
Packaging
Many breweries in the industry are looking at ways to reduce their packaging, whether that is removing hi-cones or looking at alternatives to outer packaging. Since launching the Pinter in September 2020, we’ve sent 231,756 Pinter Packs to the Fresh Beer Community; if we had shipped beer in it’s finished form, this would have amounted to 3.98 million cans .
The brewing industry has a long way to go, reducing wastage and finding innovative ways to brew beer without causing detrimental impacts on the environment... Fresh Beer from the Pinter is a good place to start.
It will be the actions that come out of COP26 which will define how we, together, tackle climate change. The same goes for the brewing industry; and how we, together, must adapt, grow and find more sustainable ways of producing and consuming beer. It’s not going to be an easy ride, but here at Pinter we’re up for the challenge and we hope you are too.