Brewing Beer Into Bioplastics: An Oktoberfest Tale

Brewers’ spent grain (BSG in industrial terms) is a damp, brownish mix that every brewery generates in abundance. In fact, it makes up about 85 percent of microbreweries’ solid waste. Some just dump it into landfills. Others follow the Brewers Association’s guidance for environmentally friendly modes of disposal: feeding BSG to cows, turning it into biofuel, composting, or milling it into baking flour. These methods, however, come with caveats. The first three are expensive in most cases, and the last doesn’t exactly yield a gourmet-caliber flavor.

So some brewers tried to convert their spent grain into a biodegradable plastic. It worked–albeit not on an industrial scale yet. Want to make it happen sooner? You quite literally will have to drink more beer!  Read Full Story in Sierra Club Magazine