MILLIONS OF PINTS ARE GONE TO GROUND
MILLIONS of pints of Guinness that went unserved during lockdown are being poured into the ground – to save trees.
Because of the coronavirus crisis the brewery has launched a forestry project and has cut activity at its St James’s Gate brewery in Dublin. This was the first time that happened since the 1916 Easter Rising. However, now production has ramped up once again in readiness for the opening of pubs.
And Guinness owner Diageo has launched a $100million (€89million) fund to pay for hygiene and safety measures, €14milion of which is for Ireland.
Guinness director of operations Aidan Crowe said: ‘It’s been a tough time in the brewery but it’s been a much tougher time if you’re trying to run on-trade outlets in this part of the world.
‘That’s why it was very, very important right from the start of the lockdown to support the on-trade as much as we could. That’s why we took the decision to bring back all of the beer.’ He added: ‘Basically, what we do is we take all the keg beer back and we decant it and we disperse the product through a number of environmentally sustainable routes.
‘The vast majority of the beer goes to willow and Christmas tree plantations, it’s used as nutrients in those farms.
‘We’ve also diverted some product through to anaerobic digesters, where it produces a bio-gas.
‘Actually, we’re quite optimistic that, in the long term, bio-gas can be a suitable fuel source for us to use here in the brewery. And then we’ve also diverted some of the product for composting.
‘So it’s an unprecedented problem for us to have and we wanted to ensure that in terms of how we manage that and manage the beer it was environmentally sustainable, because that’s so critically important, not just for our business, but obviously for the country as a whole as well.’ Asked how many pints have been poured away, Mr Crowe said: ‘It’s hundreds of thousands of kegs.’