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Q. Dear Umbra,
I have two bottled beers in my refrigerator left over from a party at least three years ago. Incredible, I know, to anyone who loves beer, but I’m not a beer drinker. If this were cake, it would be a different story. Anyway, the question: Is it better to pour the beer down the sink and recycle the bottles, but then I’m adding an alcoholic pollutant to the waterways, or to put the full bottles in the trash. It should be noted that in my community, all trash is burned (in as green a way as possible -- my local government is very environmentally conscious).
T.K.
Arlington, Va.
Photo by Nathanael Boehm.
A. Dearest T.K.,
I posed your question to several beer and water-quality experts, all of whom offered this measured, scientific response: “Your letter-writer wants to do what?!”
Let’s just say their concern was not for the aquatic organisms.
Once they got past the horror of imagining any beer meeting such a fate, the expert panelists were relatively unperturbed. “While it is indeed a tragedy that the beer is undrinkable, there is no risk in pouring it down the drain,” said Rick Keil, a professor of chemical oceanography at the University of Washington.
Tracy Collier, an environmental toxicologist who recently retired from NOAA, agreed: “There are a lot of things you should not pour down your drain, things that can harm our waters and the living resources that depend on them, but beer is not one of them.”
