You know, you can refill that bottle.

Wow, everyone's thinking about packaged beer these days.

On Thursday I was in a lecture on sustainability and the life cycle of beer at the Craft Brewers Conference. During the Q&A I presented the panel with the question "where do reusable bottles fit into a sustainability solution?"

I guess I wasn't the only one who had this question.

This morning I read an article in Joe Sixpack's column about the demise of the returnable bottle. Why did the reusable disappear in the US?

I am often fascinated with ways that brewers can lessen their carbon footprint. The returnable bottle is perhaps the most eco-friendly packaging solution besides kegs. And yet it has completely disappeared here. Bottles obviously carry a detrimental carbon load (you can refer to this article for more specifics), besides the impact of beer in a retail setting, glass carries the largest carbon footprint in the lifecycle of beer.

When I presented the sustainability director from New Belgium Brewing, who was on the panel, with the idea of reusing bottles, my thoughts were sort of poopooed as if reusing a bottle wasn't possible.

And then the audience spoke up.

Canada reuses bottles, Europe reuses bottles, developing countries reuse bottles, third world countries reuse bottles, homebrewers reuse bottles, and up until about teh 70's every bottle in the US got reused. And here we sit, one of the richest countries in the world, and we're told it's just too much of a logistical matter to be a feasible solution.

Maybe, we are just too comfortable with the waste we generate. I would think New Belgium, a brewery I hold in high esteem when it comes to sustainability, would be all over this topic. But, they weren't, just too much logistics. How sad.