The Best Eco Beers for St. Paddy’s Day

How does your favorite St. Paddy's Day beer stack up on the eco scale? We'll give you a hint: Guinness doesn't top the list. Photo: Flickr/larsomat

We love classic organic beer recipes. We’ve even heard of ways to brew your own “healthy” beer.

But for those of us who just want to sit down with a bar favorite on St. Patrick’s Day this Wednesday, check out Greentopia’s guide to sustainable beer to see how your favorite measures up.

Greentopia’s list provides a breakdown of your favorite brew’s overall footprint – rated by a system that scores the beers’ eco-friendliness on a 1-4 green leaf scale.

The score is configured by data collected from the companies themselves or from credible third party sources pertaining to the beer’s environmental reporting, production efficiency, ingredients, packaging, transportation and building design initiatives. Weights are based off life cycle studies pertaining to the beer industry, and only the top 25 percent of breweries received scorecard icons for each respective criterion.

We checked out one of the most popular beers for the big holiday – Guinness.

But we were disappointed to see that the beer didn’t even qualify because it “has some work to do if it wants to be considered a green beer, but it appears to be somewhat on its way,” according to Greentopia.

The site says while Guinness practices some slight elements of green building design and its parent company (who operates Guinness) utilizes some solar energy for clean power, it takes about 7.2 liters of water to make a liter of Guinness. This was higher than many of the other breweries Greentopia rated.

So, what’s the best eco brew to order for Wednesday? New Belgium was given four green leaves – the highest score on the list.

“New Belgium is very resource efficient – requiring only 3.9 liters of water per liter of beer. This is much lower than the industry average of around 7 liters or water needed,” according to Greentopia.

“New Belgium sources its packaging materials locally (which cuts down on its transportation impact) and is in the process of researching new packaging types. New Belgium encourages its employees to ride their bikes to work and has incorporated many elements of green building design in its offices.”

Sustainability and beer all in one? Bottoms up!

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