Today begins the European week for waste reduction, a great opportunity to raise awareness about waste prevention. When we talk about waste reduction, the first thing that comes to mind is the rule of the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Taking this into account, we can assure that the best way to diminish waste is to stop consuming goods.

And that’s great, but we all love beer so if we keep dinking it, how can we reduce the waste it generates? The solution is to modify the production chain. During the creation of beer, different byproducts are generated that normally end up being discarded. Many of the current efforts focus on converting this waste into new and useful bioproducts, which can be used to close the cycle.

Innovation is key if we want to transform the way industry works nowadays. The European Union is aiming to solve this problem by giving support to initiatives focused on tackling food waste with a new technical and sustainable approach. This also applies to beer industry.

 

The role of CHEERS

The CHEERS project aims to revalue underused or wasted by-products of the brewing industry and convert them into five high-value-added industrial bioproducts through a biorefinery approach. The initiative proposes to achieve a reduction in the resource use and environmental impact of the beer production chain and aims to cover broader impacts on biodiversity and agricultural land use. Ultimately, each value chain will achieve a minimum 45% reduction in carbon footprint.