CO2 Share of a Bottle of Beer

I wanted to find out how much impact the beer itself has on the environment. Would it help the environment more if people stopped drinking beer?


I used the data from New Belgium Brewery, it produces 330,000 barrels of beer a year and according to their data this process produces about 5000 metric tonnes of CO2.

(1 beer barrel is 31 gallons, 1 gallon is 128 ounces, and 1 bottle is 12 ounces)

If I can do a simple cost allocation and distribute the 5000 metric tonnes across 109.12 million bottles of beer, it is about 46 grams of CO2 per bottle. This is just manufacturing alone. If we can triple this for refrigeration, shipping and retail sales, it is about 125 grams per bottle.

Compare this to EPA numbers on driving a car. On the average 12,000 miles add 12,100 pounds of CO2, converting to metric units, it is about 450 grams per mile.

If you want to find the CO2 impact of your meals check out the LowCarbon Meals calculator that Siel of LA Times points out.