We have to admit that headline, which appears on a press release from Absolut, caught our attention.
Bex Almqvist, global manager on-trade at Absolut, has created “The Green Hustle,” a global bartender engagement platform which seeks to reduce bar waste by teaching fun and simple “hustles” that they can instigate today.
Turns out the problem is real: London bars along produce 800,000 yearly tons of bar waste in London — more than the combined weight of the city’s total population. One plastic straw takes 200 years to decompose and about 8.5 billion straws are wasted in the UK alone each year. There are 50,000 bars in the UK, 60,000 bars in the US and 260,000 in Spain.
Here are seven ways Absolut says bars can reduce their waste:
- Turn disregarded fruit into stock: Citrus is the most common, and most wasted ingredient, and to bartenders what bones are to chefs. So get stewing and make some citrus stock.
- Ditch the plastics: Forget plastic straws: use tasting spoons instead when taste testing and definitely don’t use anything but compostable or recyclable straws in drinks!
- Recycle: Recycle glass. Recycle paper. Recycle tin cans. Recycle everything you can get your hands on.
- Refreeze/Melted ice: refreeze melted ice at the end of the night and use it the next day. It has already been filtered so the hard part is done for you.
- Composting: But better than that, start getting your mind focused on composting, it’s like the ultimate Green Hustle Level Up for any bar.
- Put a lid on it: Put lids on your bins, and use landfill stickers and marine life stickers on your bins.
- End single-use ingredients: Think of your ingredients as a whole and think of how many ways it can be used. Take a lemon for example, you can juice it, pickle it, peel it and use it as a garnish.
Absolut says some bars are already engaged in the movement, including Broken Shaker in Miami and Honeycut in Los Angeles.