Clean Beer
UPDATE: Green Options has a nice piece on a similar topic with some more tips for hosting green gatherings.
A couple of days ago I took the NCTD 101 up to Solana Beach to visit one of my favorite spots in North County, Pizza Port. Besides having great pizza, Pizza Port is an excellent local brewery with a wide variety of beers to choose from (my favorites include Old Viscosity and Hop-Through-It IPA). Unfortunately, the traditional six pack of longnecks is a somewhat wasteful packaging for beer (though the box and bottles are certainly recyclable), especially if one is enjoying it with a few friends and intends to finish it. Luckily, an alternative and reusable beer transportation device exists: the growler.
Growlers hold 64 ounces of beer in a completely reusable glass container. Besides reducing packaging waste, growlers encourage one to seek out local craft breweries and save the energy required to transport the beer. (Of course if one is driving to the brewery the savings might not be that substantial depending on how far away it is compared to one’s local grocery store.) Also near UCSD (just a few miles east on La Jolla Village Drive/Miramar Rd), we have one of the top craft breweries in the world, AleSmith, with three beers in RateBeer.com’s Top 50. Unfortunately, unlike Pizza Port, AleSmith is very difficult to get to by bus so driving is required. Cheers!
