Plastic free? Possible?

[Brew Dad]

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Compost your grain
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And for those who have dogs, spent grains make excellent dog biscuits. Loads of simple recipes on the interwebs.

 

[fury_tea]

And for those who have dogs, spent grains make excellent dog biscuits. Loads of simple recipes on the interwebs.

I make bread from some of mine (recipe: https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/bread-from-spent-grains.82180/), but watch out for the husks.

 

[Mavroz]

Pretty much all my plastic articles go in the recycle bin as we never know what is recyclable and what is not.
We pay a fortune for council tax, so let the council sort the plastic, which also creates jobs for people.

If they want plastic sorting correctly then enforce correct labelling or make it all biodegradable. If they knock on my door and say I am doing my recycling wrong, for me it can all go in the landfill bin, we do what we can and if it isn't good enough then tough.

Plastics are certainly not going anywhere anytime soon I am afraid. Too much depends upon them.

Hope this helps.

 

[Harbey]

When you consider how much waste (in all forms) a 19L homebrew creates compared to buying 19L of commercially brewed beverage, we certainly shouldn't beat ourselves (or our partners) up. We're practically saving the planet - let's drink to that!

 

[GerritT]

Yeah that's another one, I save some for cleaning but you get more than 5 times enough. I've considered the no chill method, but that means no cold break. The Australians seem to make it work though.

No chill works, European here. Just work sanitised and Bob's your uncle.

 

[An Ankoù]

It seems to me that there's good use of plastic and plastic waste. I can't imagine how hops could be better stored than under a vacuum in plastic foil bags, but what are the bags good for afterwards? Malt can be bought in 25 Kg sacks, which can then be used for all sorts of things in the garden and, yes, they're biodegradable. But who needs 25 Kg of chocolate malt or Carapils at a time? Plastic fermenters last for ages and when their life as such is over, the can be used for water containers and then plant pots, but only if you've got enough outside space to make use of them? There's nothing more beautiful than the size and form of a Perrier bottle, and I can no more stop my good lady drinking Perrier than I can stop her being French. Fortunately I don't buy into the stuff on the supposed dangers of reusing PETs, it sounds like something thrown in by the plastic bottle manufacturing lobby, and Perrier bottles get resused over and over again. The question still remains, though, of what to do with them when they're too scratched of dirty.
No. I think I agree with Dutto. It's not going to happen and, perhaps, it shouldn't happen: it's single-use, disposable plastic which are the big problem. Lets tackle cling film, PETs and polystyrene packaging, yoghurt pots and carrier bags before we move on to long-term and structural plastics. Somebody somewhere (no doubt in the US) is making loads and loads of money promoting the use of this unnecessary *****. Ruining our beer by buying hops a kilo at a time and then wasting energy to freeze them for months or years is a distraction away from where the main problem lies.

 

[MickDundee]

I tried to do this, GEB sell 10kgs of grain in sacks but they are plastic lined. Those sacks can be used for growing potatoes or maybe other veg. For storing root veg you need to cut the plastic lining out. GEB did say they are trying to use paper bags but that seems to not have materialised.

One option is to reuse plastic bags. Good for keeping sandwiches in to take to work. Alternatively try and offset, cut down on meat.

I ordered a couple of custom grain kits (to make brewing for my mate’s Stag a bit easier) back in March and they both came in paper bags. In April I ordered various amounts of grain and all bar the 15kg (which was in a plastic liner gain sack) came in plastic bags.

I know the seal on the bottom of the paper bags on the grain kits wasn’t very good so I wonder if they’ve gone back to plastic while they figure out how to seal the paper bags better.

 

[An Ankoù]

Oh yeah, and banning plastic drinking straws, while laudable in itself just goes to show how much our Environment Secretary is in the pockets of these placky-barons!
Vote Green
Brew green beer.

 

[MickDundee]

Brew green beer.

It doesn’t look very appetising

 

[Alex.mc]

I think part of the problem is that the amount of research and development that has gone into plastic the past few decades, is enormous. And we have some amazing products and materials as a result.
I can't imagine that very much has gone into paper products, not in the same way at least.
I order chicken feed and grass seed online for delivery quite a bit, and the bags are usually 10-20kg. The grass is always in plastic, the feed in both plastic and paper. The paper bags are pretty well engineered actually. But... if I were selling a heavy powder product and had to send them via any form of delivery service, my tnedency would be to package in plastic as I would feel more comfortable about it's security regarding tears and waterproofing.
Therein lies the problem I guess? The point where the choice is equal, is the point many manufacturers will willingly swap. that probably needs some progress, and education.

 

[Sadfield]

Buying your base malt in a 25Kg sack that can than be repurposed to plant a hop bine would go a very short way to your goal. Also, harvesting and repitching yeast would help, especially if you ended up with a house strain that you used for all beers.

 

[An Ankoù]

It doesn’t look very appetising

Yeuk. I had some of that once at a CAMRA meeting. Everyone was going for it and it looked and tasted like shiite. Always been supsicious of CAMRA since then.
And leprechauns.

 

[jceg316]

I ordered a couple of custom grain kits (to make brewing for my mate’s Stag a bit easier) back in March and they both came in paper bags. In April I ordered various amounts of grain and all bar the 15kg (which was in a plastic liner gain sack) came in plastic bags.

I know the seal on the bottom of the paper bags on the grain kits wasn’t very good so I wonder if they’ve gone back to plastic while they figure out how to seal the paper bags better.

Hopefully they'll get back to it. I know vegware does a range of "plastics" but they're quite expensive.

 

[terrym]

Listen man, I do agree with you. But if even a few more of those 99,999 thought a bit more about what they were doing, then maybe it could become 88,888? I'm not staunchly into zero plastic, I know it is useful sometimes, but it's nice to try to reduce as well, vote with our wallets. I wasn't trying to start a war of ideals here, just wondered if anyone had any ideas.

You are clearly more of an optimist than I am when it comes to changing the behaviour of the average 'man on the street'. My views are based on 50 years of life observation as an adult. For example look around you and see how people respond when they are told that certain things are bad for their health like eating too much fat and sugar, with the possibility of heart disease, diabetes etc. And that's at a personal level easily remedied if you value your life, not a long term issue that may be decades away before it hits us hard and at the present time very much at arm's length from one's daily existence.

 

[-Bezza-]

The whole reusable plastic is a bit of an odd one and I actually think it's about being sensible and striking a balance.

Take carrier bags as an example. We're told that single-use plastic bags are bad for the environment and so a few years back were told to buy those "bags for life", later replaced by those canvas bags. Great, but the plastic-to-life ratio of single use bags is actually better than the bags for life. And canvas bags - cotton is ludicrously water-intensive and needs huge amounts of international transportation between grower to end consumer, all at greater weight than plastics. So it turns out the single-use plastic bags are better for the environment as a whole than the "environmentally friendly" alternatives. Of course, we should reuse those single-use bags as much as possible.

OK, so we keep the single-use bags but move to packaging. We can use paper packaging for things like fruit and veg, or grain, but it then limits the shelf-life of the produce, so we end up with greater amounts of food waste and all that entails. Things like meat etc would all last a lot less time without plastic packaging, where it gives us the ability to CO2 flush the packaging or shrink-wrap the meat. Again, of course we should be reducing unnecessary plastic packaging, like those bananas in a bag that really get my gonads in a twist - bananas naturally come in their own protective wrapper!!

In answer to the OP, I'm not sure there are any meaningful ways to reduce plastic usage in homebrewing. You can get a reusable plastic tub to go and collect your grain, but that tub will end up in the bin eventually and probably contains the same amount of plastic waste as 1,000 plastic bags used to package the grain as-is. So my point being, probably don't sweat it because it's probably not as bad as people would make you believe.

Fortunately there are things like this going on, which would seem to offer some salvation to our wanton self-destruction: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-47454719

 

[fury_tea]

A lot of the attitudes here seem to be like this one:

You are clearly more of an optimist than I am when it comes to changing the behaviour of the average 'man on the street'. My views are based on 50 years of life observation as an adult. For example look around you and see how people respond when they are told that certain things are bad for their health like eating too much fat and sugar, with the possibility of heart disease, diabetes etc. And that's at a personal level easily remedied if you value your life, not a long term issue that may be decades away before it hits us hard and at the present time very much at arm's length from one's daily existence.

I get that some people will never change, but that's no reason not to change your own habits, even ones 50 years in the making. "Nobody else is doing it, so why should I?" isn't a good enough excuse any more. Will buying your carrots loose rather than in the plastic bag save the world or undo damage that has already been done? Obviously not. But there has definitely been a shift in people's behavior and shopping habits and I think that supermarkets and businesses are looking at their bottom lines and seeing a shift towards plastic free products.

Part of it for me is that I do enjoy trying to find alternatives and often the products are better quality, more durable and work out cheaper than the plastic versions.

Some other ways we reduce our waste: we use a milk man - which supports a local business and reuses glass bottles.
I bought a safety razor, think it cost me 20 quid with 100 blades and it's the best shave I've had in years, the only waste is one blade every month. I don't know why everyone doesn't use one!
Fruit n veg is easy - just buy the loose ones
Meat n fish - take your own boxes
Rice, pasta, etc can be more difficult but there's a few places that have those weigh and save type things and looks like Waitrose is trialing them - can't be long before the rest do.
Bread - bake your own (not as hard as it sounds) or buy fresh bread from a bakery or the bakery section of the supermarket.
Soaps, shampoo etc - use bars.
Washing powder - get a box of it.

That's all I can think of for now but you can see how with a few changes you can really reduce your output. Homebrew is the next step for me, I have a few ideas to work with here.

 

[Richie_asg1]

I tried...unsuccessfully about 15 years ago to get chip shops to stop using polystyrene trays to wrap chips up in. They are not necessary if everything gets wrapped up in paper anyway, and their lifetime use is about 15 minutes.
I calculated with all the fast food outlets in my city alone - they produce enough of these each week to fill an average sized house.
I emailed the council and spoke to someone responsible for landfill management. Do you want to hear his response? - He said they actually like polystyrene in landfill - because it aids stability of the pile!
It was like banging my head against the wall, so I gave up my quest o try and eradicate these things 15 years ago.

I did however do a lot of research on the alternatives, and out of all the samples I managed to get hold of (bear in mind this was 15 years ago) out of bamboo, bagassse (grass) and paper with various coatings; It was the paper with a film made from PLA (poly lactic acid) that seemed the best. It is waterproof and heat sealable so can make waterproof cups. (Most "paper" cups have a polythene film on the inside bonded in to make it waterproof). But PLA is biodegradable, so the whole thing will biodegrade.

There is also a darker side to "degradable" plastics which is not talked about much.
People presume that just because something says it is degradable plastic that is a good thing. But it isn't. The plastics producers have created some plastics that will loose strength and degrade when exposed to UV or oxygen, and thus degrade into little pieces.............lots and LOTS of very small fragments ... that are STILL plastic!
In my opinion this is actually worse for the environment

These do get into the recycling stream of other plastics - so you end up with new products that snap and fall apart earlier than they are intended to.

I think Sweden has the best solution - All their food is composted, and what is left of the domestic waste is incinerated for power generation.
In which case carry on using single use plastics if they are heading that way anyway.

 

[fury_tea]

You can get a reusable plastic tub to go and collect your grain, but that tub will end up in the bin eventually and probably contains the same amount of plastic waste as 1,000 plastic bags used to package the grain as-is.

I beg to differ here, the grain bags are really thick and I doubt that a tub contains the same as 1000 bags, and anyway - I am on track to brew more than that in my life time haha.

 

[Mavroz]

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Everyone will have their own opinion on reducing the use of plastics, but unfortunately as has been mentioned, it will take many lifetimes to reduce let alone eradicate the use of non biodegradable plastics. The damage has been done already and it will only get worse.

The governments of every country will not force producers of food and drink items to use non plastic or recyclable packaging. It will cost the consumer far too much. Yes, some will be able to afford it, many won't. There are still many thousands of people who struggle to feed, clothe and keep themselves healthy.

"They" say in 20 years or so, there will be no more cars built with diesel or petrol engines in. Cars with these power units will be banned from the roads. I personally see diesel engines being eradicated but not petrol. (Although diesel engines are now being made more emission friendly( Electric cars are too expensive to purchase, to keep running etc etc Many people could not afford to purchase an electric car. Governments would lose billions in taxes from loss of fuel revenue... where would this come from?

Anyway, that is digressing, until a cheap alternative to common plastics is produced, very little will change in my opinion. (Not that it counts for a lot)

And yes, I am not one for sticking my neck out or paying more for recyclable products. When everyone does it or is forced to do it, I will.
That seems like the attitude of the majority.

 

[Mavroz]

Forgot to say, I buy bananas loose from Asda, as well as loose veg as we like to choose which items we want, not just a bag full of pre packed items.

I have put half a dozen bananas on the checkout belt and have been told "they should be in a bag", you know the sort of bags on the reels around the loose fruit and veg items.

So now, I put my bananas, my clove of garlic, my 2 carrots in said individual plastic bags which are provided free.

I do recycle these bags, I pick the turds my dog leaves me up in them but unfortunately the bag and contents go into the landfill bin....