This is my favorite posting on beer in a long time.
Darron Collins is the president of the College of the Atlantic, a school where studies are seen through the lens of human ecology. Apparently he understand the human ecology of beer. Read what he has to say about it here, including gems such as this one: “I, as any good beer-lover would have done in this situation, sat down on my barley sack, cleansed the pallet with a bite of pretzel, and reached for my glass.”
1 Comment | 
Community, homebrewing, Sustainability | 
Permalink
Posted by beeractivist
Last weekend I helped build two green roofs on campus at American University. Green roofs in Washington D.C. help prevent water pollution from entering the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers and eventually the Chesapeake Bay. Details on the District of Columbia’s green roof incentives are online here.
Channel 9 News interviewed me about the project.
Channel 9 News Living Green
It took about fifty volunteers five days to build 2200 square feet of living roof. It was a lot of fun.
Loads more photos on Facebook.
4 Comments | Sustainability | Permalink
Posted by beeractivist
As if solar panels weren’t enough. The day after the solar PV system was completed we picked our first harvest of homegrown figs.
Well, I call them ‘homegrown’ but that term implies that the people in my home did something to grow them. But that’s just not true. All we did is wait and watch to see when the fig tree in our front yard would produce some fruit. Then, once we saw the birds and squirrels chowing down we figured it was time to pick.
So happens we were having a family reunion right when the figs ripened so I had plenty of help from my nieces, nephews and cousins’ children (are they second cousins or cousins once removed?). And fortunately our friend and neighbor Richard was home who came right over with his ladder.
Richard arrives with ladder and handy fruit picking basket.
My youngest nephew Peter don't need no stinkin' ladder. He climbed right up the tree.
Over at Richard and Andrea's, Andrea and Seung cut of the stems in preparation for fig jamming.
Andrea introduces us to the acronym FIGJAM – Fuck I’m Good, Just Ask Me.
The figs stew for about an hour with a bit of honey. Then they go in jars and get called fig jam.
Next year around this time I’ll have honey from my own hive to add to the fig harvest. Can’t wait.
2 Comments | beer and food pairing, Sustainability | Permalink
Posted by beeractivist
Seung and I moved into a new house in April. Ever since then I have been busy at work turning it into my green dream home. Last weekend we reached a major milestone: solar power.
This 5.4 kW solar photovoltaic system should produce most of the electricity we need to run the house. I’m stoked.
Standard Solar unloads solar pv panels from the truck.
Installation gets started and I'm surprised at how quickly the crew gets a couple rows of panels in place.
Minutes later, a bad omen? A serious thunderstorm stops installation efforts in their tracks.
But it ain't no thang, the storm passes ...
... the crew gets back to work...
... and the panels are all installed in about two hours.
The electrical work inside the house took much longer than expected, but at the end of day two I flipped the switch on the inverter and celebrated with a wind-powered Brooklyner Weiss.
This whole system will pay itself off in about five years. After that I’ll have a minimum of 20 more years of free energy guaranteed by a warranty. Right now, the incentives for solar in the District of Columbia are better than they’ve ever been. Interested in doing the same? Check out the District’s website on their incentive program right here. And if you don’t live in DC, check out this national database of renewable energy incentives.
10 Comments | Sustainability | Permalink
Posted by beeractivist
Green America, the green consumer organization where I worked for almost seven years, has a program called Responsible Shopper that aggregates news and develops social responsibility profiles of prominent companies in consumer goods categories. The recently updated their profiles in the alcohol industry and there are some surprising findings.
For example, Boston Beer, the brewer of Sam Adams beers, gets a lousy C- in Labor and also in Health and Safety, and a measely C in the Environment category. I couldn’t find anything on the Responsible Shopper website describing the precise rating methodology. Although the program existed while I worked at Green America, I don’t recall their being a clear methodology for this then either. So even though I am an ardent supporter of the organization’s work, I have to wonder about the credibility of these ratings given that there is no transparent explanation of how the grades are developed.
All that said, there are some nuggets in here that will inform the sustainability-minded beer drinkers out there. An eye-opener was the fact that AnheuserBusch clocked in at #41 on the Political Economy Research Institute’s 2010 Toxic 100 Air Polluters list. Check out all the gory details right here.
Unfortunately, Boston Beer was the only craft brewer included in the Responsible Shopper breweries profile. I wonder how Sierra Nevada and New Belgium would fare if they were assessed. Knowing quite a bit about the environmental sustainability of both of these companies, I’m curious about their other social responsibility indicators such as labor and governance.
4 Comments | Corporate greening, Sustainability | Permalink
Posted by beeractivist
You are currently browsing the archives for the Sustainability category.
Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World
by Chris O'Brien
(New Society Publishers, 2006)
