Amstel returnable bottle

All Amstel bottles are green. But some are greener than others. Today, for the first time, I turned in a case of empty Amstel bottles to my neighbourhood bottle store and walked out with a new case of Amstel in washed and refilled bottles. No silica sand was mined, hauled and melted; no recycled bottles were heated to 1500 degrees Celsius for remolding. These bottles can be reused up to 40 times.

Until a few months ago, I wasn’t even aware that I could buy beer in returnable bottles. Now, South African Breweries has made it easier. In addition to Amstel, over the past couple of months they have added 330 ml returnable bottles of Castle Lager, Carling Black Label, and Hansa Pilsner to their production lines in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. Returnables for these brands were previously only available for larger bottles.

Best of all, the beer is much cheaper. I paid R86 for my case of Amstel. It would have cost me R104, or 21 percent more, to buy a case of Amstel in disposable bottles at the same store. Of course I did pay a deposit of R26 for the crate and bottles the first time I bought, but I only had to pay that once, and I can get it back when I become a teetotaler.

All over the world, the companies that make different forms of beverage packaging fight over whose package is best for the environment. Determining the environmental cost of a particular bottle or can over the course of its life cycle is a very complicated business. Local factors that must be considered include the scarcity of water, how the electricity used in manufacturing is generated, and how far a bottle or can must be transported to and from the consumer. Those in the disposable business will argue against returnables, largely because of transport costs.

It is quite possible that for a farmer in the Kalahari, a reusable bottle would waste more energy for the round trip transport than it saves in manufacturing. But to get to the brewery again, my bottle only has to travel 7 kms farther than the municipality would have to haul it to the dump. For anyone living in Gauteng, Durban or Cape Town, this is the greenest beer packaging.

The mantra of waste reduction is “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” in that order. Recycling is only the third best option. Reusing is better. But reducing is not only the greenest option, it’s also the simplest, healthiest and cheapest alternative. It’s tap water. Now if only Rand Water could figure out how to make beer flow out of the tap.