Village Sustainability Newsletter February 2025
Dry January; then what?
First, apologies to anyone choosing to do Dry February rather than Dry January – I understand that sometimes going “cold turkey” (get it?!) straight after New Year is a bit much (and also that the second month of the year is considerably shorter than the – as I write - interminable first one).
Second, if you don’t or shouldn’t drink alcohol, please skip this article, and I’ll be back with something more wholesome next month. If you’d like a bit of help, the app “Try Dry” is very helpful in counting and recording units of alcohol. And if Dry January has already given you a taste for restful sleep, spare cash, nice skin, and a better recall of the plot of the serial you watched on TV last night, tea and mocktails it continues to be.
Right – is anyone still reading? I know this village, and I suspect yes.
Many are welcoming the return of a well-earned drink at the end of the day or week, so I thought I’d share some learning around the sustainability of cans and beers.
I recently discovered a kind volunteer in Thatcham who recycles well-cleaned and sorted metals at her home through the Terracycle scheme, raising funds for charity. Join the “Thatcham & Newbury plastic free, recycling and zero waste UK” Facebook group if you want to find out more. But recycling them kerbside or in appropriate council containers is just as sustainable.
All drinks cans produced in the UK are now made of aluminium, which can be recycled repeatedly without losing any quality. So recycling these cans helps to conserve non-renewable fossil fuels, reduce the consumption of energy and lessen the emission of gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Aluminium is the most cost-effective material to recycle, using around only 5% of the energy and emissions needed to make it from its raw material, bauxite. Used aluminium cans are shredded, removing any coloured coating, melted in a furnace and the molten metal is poured into huge ingot casts to set. Each ingot can be made into around 1.5 million cans. No aluminium is wasted in the recycling process and around 75% of all the aluminium ever made is still in circulation. This information and more is from the Recyclenow.com website.
Anyway, as I was washing and squashing the many beer, tonic and soft drinks cans we accumulated over Christmas, I became distracted by the branding. Two beers struck me - The Hop Foundry (an Aldi brand) has produced The Misfits, in conjunction with Freedom Brewery, described as Wonky Fruit Beer, as well as Another Round, in conjunction with Toast Brewing, sustainably brewed with surplus Aldi tiger bread.
What a brilliant way to use 4,000 loaves of tiger bread and nearly a tonne of “wonky” fruit which were otherwise destined for destruction as food waste! Consumers have been conditioned to accept only “perfect” fruit, and stale bread isn’t easy to reuse, and with such a short shelf life that any fluctuation in demand can cause stock excesses, re-purposing in this way seems a genius idea. Further, it indicates that some in the food industry are starting to think more imaginatively and creatively about waste and the environment – hurrah! The beer drinkers in my family enjoyed both, and their sustainable credentials warmed my heart.
Oh, and for the sake of balance, I’m told that there are other sustainable beer brands to. Brewdog do some carbon negative brewing, as well as local brewers like Delphic, Indigenous and Renegade having very low travel miles…
Cheers!
Julia Hoaen