This brewer refuses to sell his products in cans. Here’s why

Henry Pedro schooled something about bauxite mining in a university engineering category that ended adult conversion an critical welfare he had to make in his career as a brewer.

Educated as a chemical engineer, Pedro spent many of his adult life in upkeep engineering until 2013, when he co-founded Boxing Rock Brewing in Shelburne, N.S.

All breweries contingency confirm how they wish to sell their alcohol, possibly in cans or bottles. It is a large decision — and that’s where Pedro’s believe of bauxite valid helpful.

Bauxite is a key part indispensable to make aluminum. It’s a vegetable found in many countries, though it’s some-more abounding in pleasant regions, often sourced from building countries such as Ghana, Guinea and Guyana. Australia is a important exception.

How bauxite is mined

Bauxite is mostly extracted through strip-mining, “a method that leads to immeasurable open pits of ravaged land, poignant environmental degradation, and a intrusion or even drop of internal wildlife, H2O flows, and other environmental and ecological processes,” records a book Aluminum Ore: The Political Economy of a Global Bauxite Industry.

From there, a bauxite needs to be smelted to turn aluminum.

Bauxite, an ore used to furnish aluminium, is processed during a bureau in Kamsar, Guinea, owned by a country’s largest mining firm, Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée, in 2008. Guinea is a world’s heading exporter of bauxite. (Georges Gobet/AFP/Getty Images)

“Aluminum is an impossibly energy-intensive process. We schooled how to melt aluminum in propagandize and they use these enormous electric arc furnaces to modify aluminum ore into aluminum,” Pedro says.

That knowledge tipped a beam for Boxing Rock to use potion bottles. Those 341-millilitre potion bottles are famous as something called industry-standard bottles which, once used, are sent to a trickery where they’re stripped of their labels, cleared and reused by participating breweries.

These bottles can be reused about 20 times and are the dark-brown ones compared with normal drink bottles. The association also uses 650-millilitre potion bottles. A reuse module for those is approaching to be implemented soon as well.

Spotting beers regulating printed cans contra sleeve cans can need an up-close look. Of these 3 cans, usually a one in a centre is a printed can. (Craig Paisley/CBC)

Amongst microbreweries in Nova Scotia, usually Boxing Rock, Propeller Brewing Co. and Garrison Brewing use a industry-standard bottles for their 341-millilitre bottles.

The non-industry customary bottles used by other qualification breweries are either recycled to make new bottles, or used to furnish fibreglass.

Aluminum can benefits

As for cans, they have their advantages, Pedro says.

Because cans are lighter in weight, shipping costs are cheaper. Their opacity means they won’t get strike by object and get skunked. Because they’re atmosphere tight, they assistance a drink stay fresher.

But for Pedro, that’s where a advantages flattering many stop.

Besides carrying a opposite feel, sleeved cans can be speckled where a tag wraps around a can and meets. (Craig Paisley/CBC)

According to Divert Nova Scotia, a classification that oversees recycling in a province, when recycling depots collect aluminum cans, they’re baled and shipped off to a U.S. for recycling and finished into new cans.

Of a 368 million libation containers returned for recycling final year in Nova Scotia, 193 million were aluminum and 27 million were glass.

A story of 2 aluminum cans

But not all aluminum cans are alike.

The many common form are those in that a tag is printed directly on the can. It is a can of choice for mass-produced beers and for some qualification breweries in Nova Scotia.

Some breweries imitation their labels on a cosmetic sleeve that is afterwards trustworthy to a a can though this also has a downside.

“It becomes a bit of a contaminant,” pronounced Jeff MacCallum, CEO of Divert Nova Scotia. “It creates problems downstream for recyclers since it has a opposite melting heat when they routine it, and it clumps.”

It’s unfit to contend how many sleeve cans are being returned to Nova Scotia recycling depots.

MacCallum said the depots don’t heed between a opposite can types in their reports to Divert Nova Scotia, though he did say the arise in recognition of qualification beers has led to some-more sleeve cans being used.

This aluminum can with a sleeve comes with a recommendation to mislay a sleeve before returning it for recycling. (Craig Paisley/CBC)For smaller breweries, sleeve cans are appealing for a few reasons.Jeff MacCallum, CEO of Divert Nova Scotia, says a series of sleeve cans being forsaken off during recycling depots has increasing since of a qualification drink bang in Nova Scotia. (Divert Nova Scotia)

“To buy a embellished cans, we have to buy a many incomparable volume, so [a sleeve can] allows for smaller scale and flexibility which is because we consider we see a marketplace regulating them,” pronounced MacCallum.

Joshua Counsil is a selling executive and co-founder of Halifax’s Good Robot Brewing Company. His brewery doesn’t have an in-house canning or bottling system. Although a brewery has put out 3 canned beers regulating sleeves, this was finished by employing a mobile canning company. He pronounced a sleeves concede for some-more artistic artwork.

Counsil said Good Robot has an environmental cabinet that’s been looking into a use of sleeve cans and is good wakeful of a environmental considerations.

Counsil said his welfare would be for Good Robot to use industry-standard bottles, though it is just not financially possibly during a impulse for a association to buy a bottling system.

As well, he pronounced consumer final also change enclosure choices as some beers are improved matched to being sole in possibly cans or bottles.

“Light … beers, that we wish to have some-more than one of, are good for 12- or 16-ounce cans,” pronounced Counsil.

“You can take them camping with you. You can simply ride them … For your higher-end stuff, your large stouts, barley wines and whatnot that you competence wish to share during a celebration or give as a gift, there’s still this notice that a bottle is aloft quality.”

Since final December, Good Robot Brewing Company has expelled 3 beers regulating sleeve cans. It also sells a drink in growlers and on tap. (Anjuli Patil/CBC)

Counsil said if people are looking to make their celebration decisions quite on environmental reasons, afterwards industry-standard bottles or growlers are a approach to go, though people have opposite reasons for creation expenditure choices.

“Reused is always a best approach to revoke impact. But a fact is people like preference and not everybody is going to be bringing a bottles behind to a depot, they’re not going to be reusing growlers, they’re going to be investing in what’s available and inexpensive for them,” he said.

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/nova-scotia-craft-beer-bottles-aluminum-cans-bauxite-1.4704034?cmp=rss