Brewery Vivant–Canalysis & Why We Choose Cans Over Bottles & New Belgium Co-Brew

The true best environmental choice outside of drinking draft beer from your local brewery is to purchase your beer in growlers. You would be amazed at how many growlers we fill – it’s fantastic! The next best option is probably for the brewery to distribute reusable bottles to retailers. We thought about doing this but we knew we weren’t prepared for the logistical commitment they require, the expense of the machine, nor the space to put one of these behemoth washers in our small neighborhood brewery. These options aside, we now come to choosing bottles or cans.

Through my years of experience doing life cycle assessments, I know that virgin aluminum is more toxic and requires more energy to produce than glass. Luckily recycled aluminum has a much lower impact than virgin and our cans typically contain 68% recycled content. For this and all of the other reasons that we have in the sustainability section on this website (aluminum is more often recycled, the economic value of recycling aluminum subsidizes the recycling costs of all other materials, cans have more recycled content in them than glass bottles, cans protect beer from light, etc.), plus the fact that Michigan is a high recreation state where unbreakable is desirable, and the fact that the canning line we purchased requires less manpower to operate than a bottling line, we chose cans over bottles and it was the right choice for our brewery and one I am satisfied with.