Reusing Craft Beer Bottles In Oregon

bottles, Reusing Craft Beer Bottles In Oregon

Sustainability has long been championed by the craft beer industry and now some eco-conscious breweries are banning together to take the beer bottle usage in a smarter direction.

Here’s the deal…

bottles, Reusing Craft Beer Bottles In OregonStarting In July, a collective of Oregon craft breweries will begin selling beer in reusable glass bottles… the country’s first statewide refillable beer bottle initiative according to Food & Wine.

Seven breweries including Widmer Brothers, Buoy Beer, Double Mountain, GoodLife, Gigantic, Wild Ride and Rock Bottom will all participate in the program’s launch, with other breweries potentially joining the campaign later.

The more durable glass bottles, will be on store shelves just like all the other beer bottles but they’ll “have markings on them to indicate that they can be washed and reused up to 40 times instead of being crushed with the rest of the glass recycling,” according to OPD.

bottles, Reusing Craft Beer Bottles In OregonInspired by successful programs in Germany and orchestrated by the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative (the people in charge of collecting and recycling beverage containers in Oregon), the new campaign expects to have 2 million to 3 million refillable bottles going into circulation during the first year of this pilot program.

Initially the participating breweries will use 500-milliliter refillable bottles before adding the more frequently used 12-ounce bottles in the fall.

And until Oregon gets its own glass bottle-washing system in place, the refillable containers will be trucked to a facility in Montana to be washed, which obviously leaves its own carbon footprint, but one that the cooperative sees as less environmentally burdensome than the heating process that comes with glass recycling…

Banner image credit: Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative

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