There's no ethical beer drinking under capitalism...

March 11, 2025 8:40 AM

...or how to Buy Beer in the Bad Place. I like to drink my Preferred Beer, and would like to buy it in the least environmentally harmful container. It comes in bottles and cans, for roughly the same price per oz. It is better for the environment to buy glass or aluminum? I imagine glass, because sand is probably way easier to extract from the earth than mining, refining and smelting aluminum? But I also have heard that recycling glass is more expensive (and maybe takes more energy?) than making new glass?

More little details I am overthinking:
Both cans and bottles are worth $.05 to recycle where I live.
The beer comes in 6 stubby bottles or 4 tallboy cans-- so same price/oz, but different amounts of oz/container.
And glass is heavier to transport, how much of an impact would the increased fuel consumption make on how environmental damage I'm causing per beer?
I am sure to buy it from the least evil stores to be less evil economically.
To be clear I am looking for convincing theories, I'm not looking for someone to crunch the numbers from harvested grain to my frosty glass and give me a definite number.

posted by Grandysaur to Grab Bag (17 answers total)

Aluminum uses far less energy to recycle than in its initial creation, is my understanding, so it's preferred. (Mind you, the initial smelting is pretty awful, so the only way to justify it is to use and reuse that metal as many times as possible.)

You're entirely correct about the extra weight of glass bottles using more fuel. Also, glass breaks more than cans, so there's extra units delivered to cover that waste, meaning more fuel (and tire dust and and and).
posted by wenestvedt at 8:52 AM on March 11 [6 favorites]

No hard science, but it would seem that aluminum is the better choice. Especially with most community commingled/single-stream recycling, it seems natural that there would be a fair bit of breakage with glass containers, which would then be discarded or at least much harder (and so, more expensive/less likely) to safely handle and process for recycling.
posted by xedrik at 8:54 AM on March 11 [2 favorites]

How far away from the bottling plants are the stores? That's going to have a lot of impact on the fuel consumption. Aluminum is pretty environmentally-friendly if it's recycled.

Another consideration: even though the volume of beer in a pack is the same, does the 6-pack vs 4-pack format affect how much beer you drink in a sitting? Like, if you pretty much always have one container of beer, you get six servings out of a six-pack and four out of a four-pack (obviously), so the six-pack lasts you 50% longer than a four-pack. If you drink, like, "at least 16 ounces" in a sitting, i.e. you might have two 12-oz bottles rather than a single 16-oz, then the six-pack only lasts 2/3 as long as the four-pack.

On the other hand, if you buy, like, one pack a week and when you run out, you run out, then the volume doesn't matter much. But whatever gets you buying less beer is probably the easiest way to lower the environmental impact.
posted by mskyle at 8:57 AM on March 11 [2 favorites]

Buy beer by the keg?
posted by Ideefixe at 9:02 AM on March 11 [9 favorites]

There's been widespread switch to cans over bottles in the craft beer industry over the last decade, so depending on what type of beer you like, you might not have much choice. I'm curious if there will be a switch back to bottles if aluminum prices skyrocket with tariffs, but it requires changing a lot of production equipment, so might not be feasible for breweries to go back to bottles.

The calculation also changes if you live in a place that reuses glass bottles rather than recycles them, but that's very rare in the US (I don't want to say it doesn't happen at all in the US, but I can't say I've seen it).

Maybe also look into growlers? They've fallen out of fashion in some/many places, but if you've got a place where you can consistently get them filled with different beers, that could be a good option. I've got a nice Stanley 32oz growler that keeps carbonation for days and stays cold for hours. Some states don't allow breweries to fill growlers that don't have the brewery's branding, though, so look into that. I remember Massachusetts being a stickler for that for a while but if you had a growler that had no branding, that would be ok. There used to be a lot of options for growlers, but maybe not as many now that growlers aren't as possible and beer is losing market share in the beverage industry.
posted by msbrauer at 9:15 AM on March 11 [5 favorites]

A local brewery here in British Columbia (where standard glass bottles are actually cleaned and re-used), crunched the numbers many years ago and found that cans had lower carbon emissions and environmental impact when you consider the additional energy required to transport the bottles (both full and empty), the cardboard packaging for bottles (versus the smaller amount of plastic for cans), and the energy needed for cleaning. This mostly came down to the weight and bulk of the bottles.

So on that basis, I think a system where the glass bottles aren't even re-used is certain to be worse than cans. Glass recycling is kind of a dubious enterprise entirely because it takes a lot of energy (not a lot less than making new glass) and there are issues with sorting glass colours, while aluminum recycling uses far less energy than making new aluminum. In my area, they sometimes take the glass for recycling and then just crush it and put it in the landfill anyways, because recycling isn't economical.
posted by ssg at 9:19 AM on March 11 [5 favorites]

Please let's phase out bottles. Assholes throw them all over the place for fun, and the streets are covered with broken glass.
posted by JimN2TAW at 9:36 AM on March 11 [2 favorites]

Individual serving aluminum is significantly more recyclable and more likely to be recycled than glass. However, refilling and reusing bottles is even better if you live someplace where that's an option. Individual serving containers inherently introduce inefficiencies, so getting your beer in a growler or by the keg is probably the most environmentally-friendly option, since those are both generally reused over and over again and obviate the need for all the smaller single-serving containers being moved at all.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:45 AM on March 11 [5 favorites]

Yes kegs (including various smaller kegs) will be an improvement over either cans or bottles. The other thing that's good environmentally is if you have a local brewery that does growlers- then you just reuse your own growlers ad infinitum.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:46 AM on March 11 [3 favorites]

All beer cans need liners because beer will corrode aluminum, and all those lining compounds have problems — they all used to be made from bisphenol A!

I would stick to glass ... because glass won't stick it to my beer.
posted by jamjam at 10:27 AM on March 11 [4 favorites]

If you're in a region that collects deposit fees for alcoholic beverages, and has redemption locations, then choose glass. Glass beer bottles that are collected e.g. at Ontario's Beer Store locations are sterilized and sold back to brewers for re-use -- no remanufacturing required.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:30 AM on March 11 [5 favorites]

If you're in a region that collects deposit fees for alcoholic beverages, and has redemption locations, then choose glass. Glass beer bottles that are collected e.g. at Ontario's Beer Store locations are sterilized and sold back to brewers for re-use -- no remanufacturing required.

Not in the US. When turned in for redemption, the bottles are crushed. Been a while since I've done it myself, but I remember that some (or maybe all) redemption machines do the crushing as soon as the bottle is collected in the US. It's really noisy, but I guess it allows a machine to hold more glass.
posted by msbrauer at 12:05 PM on March 11

Previously-ish (although mostly for the nostalgia factor)
posted by unknowncommand at 4:40 PM on March 11

I drink a lot of beer. Or I did. I much prefer bottles although the coldest beer I ever had was a can of Miller High Life served at a little bar in the Adirondack Mountains of NY. But I digress.

I think this trying to figure it out is a worthwhile thought exercise, but it is an exercise. Unless you are drinking beer at the same rate as a sailor that just won the lottery, your consumption trends will not affect shipping or recycling or anything other than your own experience.

Glass bottles returned to a machine in the US are crushed on the spot as noted above. Long neck bottles served in a bar are most likely returned by the bar to the distributor who then sterilizes them and reuses them. (Plastic bottles are shredded in the machines as the bottle goes down the conveyor belt.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 6:59 PM on March 11 [2 favorites]

We are running out of the kind of sand needed to make glass, and recycling glass takes a lot more energy than recycling aluminum. Of course, as an individual your impact is teeny tiny - the amount of cans or bottles you use in your lifetime is minuscule compared to say, the material decisions of a car manufacturer or a skyscraper architect. I think that what matters here is the amount of enjoyment and fulfillment you get from the beer drinking experience. Theoretically, you would then take that positive impact and pay it forward, perhaps with reaching out to your fellow humans, asking companies to make more ethical choices, researching local political candidates, creating art, etc. So, if you have the choice between a glass bottle or aluminum can, all things being equal, what is better for you to hold in your hand? Do you like a frosty beverage? Glass is a better insulator. But perhaps you like to drink a beer after a short hike - aluminum is lighter so you can carry it to your destination more easily. Maybe you are some kind of super taster and the metallic taste of aluminum is detectable to you - glass will result in a nicer sip. What about your hand size? Cans are usually wider than bottles, so you might find one easier to hold over the other. My guess is aluminum might be a tiny bit better, depending on your local laws and recycling facilities, but this really is not a problem for you to solve.
posted by Mizu at 12:58 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]

Refuse > reduce > re-use > recycle.

Refuse is tricky. Reduce up to you. Re-use is kegs and growlers, and glass in some places. If recycling, aluminium.

That all said, glass is just better to contain beer in, and drink it from - that’s why I have glasses.
(I don’t know if they changed something, or I’m just older, but I used to object to the taste of aluminium more than I do now. Still prefer not to drink straight from a can).
posted by pompomtom at 3:23 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]

Would a mini-keg be a good choice (if compatible with your tastes and habits)? Does a multi-serving container have less material per serving than a 12 ioz can?
posted by SemiSalt at 4:47 AM on March 12