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Why Tom Holland launching a non-alcoholic beer brand is actually a big deal

For one, others may see themselves in his journey.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore (left), Canva (right)

Tom Holland has launched BERO, a non-alcoholic beer brand.

Actor Tom Holland has launched a non-alcoholic beer brand, BERO, and the response has been…interesting.

Some people question what the point of a non-alcoholic beer is. These are real comments from people reacting to the news:

"What is beer without alcohol?"

"Can you even call beer, beer, if its non-alcohol?"

"If it's non alcoholic then isn't it just soda?"

"Wouldn't it be better to just have a Coke or something?

There seems to be some misunderstanding of why someone would want to drink a non-alcoholic beer, which is a little surprising considering society's shifting views about alcohol, especially among the younger generations. But that misunderstanding is exactly why Tom Holland's BERO is such a big deal.

A lot of people might see themselves in Tom Holland's journey

Holland shared with Jay Shetty how he recognized he had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol after deciding to do a "Dry January." Having a drink was all he could think about, which scared him. He decided to extend his not drinking to February to prove to himself that he didn't really have a problem.

"Two months go by, and I was still really struggling," he said. "I felt like I couldn't be social. I felt like I couldn't go to the pub and have a lime soda. I couldn't go out for dinner—I was really, really struggling. And I started to worry that maybe I really had an alcohol problem."

So he decided to wait until his birthday, June 1st, to have a drink again, thinking that if he could make it six months without alcohol that he didn't have a problem.

"By the time I got to June 1st, I was the happiest I'd been in my entire life," he said. "I could sleep better. I could handle problems better…I had such better mental clarity, I felt healthier, I felt fitter. And I said to myself, 'Why am I enslaved to this drink? Why am I so obsessed with the idea of having this drink?'"

While he says he doesn't want to preach to anyone about drinking, he's loved being sober.

"It's been amazing. I can't believe the difference that I feel from not drinking."

Other people may see themselves in Holland's story, at least the first part of it, and it may help them to hear how much he has enjoyed being sober. So often, people think that sobriety sounds boring or painful or awful, so hearing someone like Tom Holland—a popular celebrity who is beloved by multiple generations—speak positively of the experience could be just the push someone needs to recognize their own problem and do something about it.

Having non-alcoholic 'real drink' alternatives is helpful for sober social stigma

People may choose not to drink for many reasons—addiction, health, religious belief or simply hating the taste of alcohol. But there's a strong social culture around drinking that people may not fully appreciate until they find themselves outside of it.

It shouldn't make a difference, but having drinks that aren't just soda or juice to order when you're around people who are drinking makes everyone feel a more comfortable. It's nice for non-drinkers to be able to order something that doesn't feel like it came from the children's menu, and having a beer to order can feel a bit less like a violation of the "grab a beer together" vibe, even if it doesn't involve alcohol.

As Holland's message to early supporters of BERO, having a non-alcoholic beer provides "a way to celebrate and connect without compromise."

Much like the push for mocktails, having non-alcoholic beer options allows non-drinkers to participate in the culture of "going out for drinks" without feeling as much pressure to drink alcohol.

Some people actually like the taste of beer but don't want the alcohol

Several commenters asked what the point of beer without alcohol is because "beer doesn't taste good" and people basically only drink beer for the alcohol. But there are actually non-drinkers who like the taste of beer and enjoy having non-alcoholic alternatives.

There are already non-alcoholic beers, of course. Anheuser-Busch launched its non-alcoholic beer O'Doul's in 1990, and for a long time that was basically the only option for teetotalers who wanted beer. Now the market for non-alcoholic drinks is increasing, so we're seeing more and more options.

Holland shares that one of his goals with BERO was "to bring all the sophistication and flavour of the best craft beverages," which will appeal to people who like beer but have discerning tastes. Beer drinkers have lots of options and their own personal preferences, and there's no reason non-drinkers can't have a wide range of tastes to choose from.

If people don't want to drink non-alcoholic beer, they certainly don't have to. But there's no question that having more non-alcoholic drink options is a good thing for people who don't want to or can't drink alcohol.

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This beloved brewery gets electricity from its own beer. Yup: beer energy!

After more than a decade of delicious craft-beer-making, Magic Hat Brewery had grown into a major operation.

They got so big, in fact, that they ... actually couldn't get any bigger.

By 2007, Magic Hat was making more than 3.3 million gallons of beer a year. More than 90% of that final product was water, which was a major problem for the town of South Burlington, Vermont. (And that's not even counting the water used in cleaning and other aspects of production, too.)

As it was, the brewery's water bills were costing them about $200,000 a year, and the treatment facilities in their hometown were already working at full capacity. They wanted to start making more beer. But if they did, there wouldn't be any water left for the city's 18,000 residents.

Inside the "Artifactory" at the Magic Hat Brewery in South Burlington, Vermont. All photos by Thom Dunn/Upworthy, unless otherwise specified.

The brewery owners thought about building their own water treatment plant right at their brewery. But then a better idea presented itself.

PurposeEnergy, a small start-up founded by an MIT graduate named Eric Fitch, approached Magic Hat and offered to solve their water problem.

Fitch had been working on a prototype for what he called the "tribrid bioreactor." It was a hybrid of three different digester systems that would not only clean a brewery's wastewater, but also convert the biosolid waste (which is organic material such as spent grains, hops, and trub) into electricity.

Fitch had been looking for a place to put his prototype into action. Magic Hat was looking for ways to expand without ruining the city's water supply. It was a match made in Hop Heaven.

Converting their leftover beer parts into sustainable electricity? That was just an added bonus.

Hasper Kuno of PurposeEnergy inside the company's biogas generator at the Magic Hat Brewery.

How does something called a tribrid bioreactor work, exactly?

Basically, like this:

Image courtesy of Magic Hat Brewery and PurposeEnergy, used with permission.

"We basically allow Magic Hat to keep on expanding their production and not really be a burden on the local town," explained Hasper Kuno, who oversees PurposeEnergy's facility in South Burlington.

"What we send down the drain here, it’s literally cleaner than your typical household. And also we’re producing electricity on it, so it’s a no-brainer."

The thin black sludge on the left is how digested beer waste looks coming out of the digester; the clear cup on the right is how it looks after it's gone through the system's water clarifier.

According to Kuno, PurposeEnergy's tribrid bioreactor system can convert 93% of the brewery's waste into biogas and then electricity, allowing them to produce up to 220 kilowatts of energy daily — enough to power more than 200 average-size homes. Over the last five years, they've cumulatively produced more than 2.4 gigawatts of energy — which is twice as much as it took Doc Brown to power the Flux Capacitor that sent his beloved DeLorean back in time in "Back to the Future." So that's a lot.

"As far as we know, this is the most efficient digester in the world," Kuno said.

Oh, and that leftover 7% of waste that doesn't get converted into energy? It's still rich enough in nutrients to work as a hyper-concentrated fertilizer, which PurposeEnergy gives away to local farms — that is, when they're not using it as a soil substitute to grow their own hops.

Hops growing up the side of the water treatment tank behind the Magic Hat Brewery — with no actual soil, just a plant bed of leftover biowaste. So far, the hops are only being used for homebrewing, not commercial beer.

Since 2010, several other major U.S. breweries have adopted PurposeEnergy's epically sustainable brewing system too.

The bioreactor at Delaware's Dogfish Head Brewery is twice the size of the one at Magic Hat. The 1 million gallon system was built in 2014, and it has enabled the brewery to reduce its overall water consumption by more than half.

And in March 2016, PurposeEnergy broke ground on another new facility at Kona Brewing Company in Hawaii.

Kuno believes that big breweries will eventually hop on board with this trend, too. Companies like Molson Coors already have their own water treatment facilities on-premises, but the systems at those breweries have a life span of around 50 years.

"When that time is up, then we’ll come in and get them a new digester," Kuno said.

"No parking" because this is where the burn-off from the gas-to-energy conversion happens — meaning that big copper pipe sometimes shoots out fireballs, which are much less tasty than beer.

The best part about this whole thing? This sustainability system isn't limited to just beer.

As long as there's some kind of organic waste in a system, the bioreactor can convert it into energy.

"We’ve got a couple of dairies that we’re hoping to install some systems," Kuno said. "Acid whey makes a lot of electricity, and that’s the byproduct of Greek yogurt, which is huge right now."

If a brewery could power an entire neighborhood with just its own beer, who knows what other amazing ways we can find to make our world more sustainable?

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This beer made from old food is the perfect way to drink responsibly.

Summer is the perfect time for stress-free relaxation with a beer in hand.

It's in those summer moments that nagging, worrisome questions weighing on you throughout the rest of the year suddenly become smaller and less heavy.

Questions like, "How am I going to pay rent next month?" and "What is my parent's Netflix password again?" just melt away as you sit back in your lawn chair, crack open a cold brew, and enjoy the statistically too-warm weather.

Beer has no labels. Photo via iStock.

But here's a question you probably don't consider in those moments: What if that beer you're drinking could help cut down on food waste?

This summer, thanks to a brewery in England, that might seriously be an option. 

Stay with me because this is actually really cool.

The beer is called "Wasted," and it's a pear-flavored ale crafted by Northern Monk Brewery in Leeds. 

It's made of overripe pears and discarded croissants and brioche. 

Why would anyone make a beer out of old food?

To make the beer, Northern Monk partnered with The Real Junk Food Project, a "pay as you feel" organization that runs cafes that make meals out of discarded food. 

As such, "Wasted" is an aptly-named zero-waste beer.

Even the glass bottle it comes in is 100% recyclable and the used hops from the beer making process are donated to local farms where they are repurposed as fertilizer. 

"Brewing beer naturally creates waste, so we wanted to find a way to change that," brewery founder Russell Bisset told Metro. "We saw this as an opportunity to challenge pre-conceived notions of what beer can be made with and highlight the kinds of products that go to waste on a daily basis."

A zero-waste beer is all well and good, but how does it taste?

According to Daniel Tapper at The Guardian, it tastes "incredible." And the Beer O'Clock Show, a beer-reviewing podcast in the U.K., calls it "well balanced" with "slight fruit flavors and an easy soft finish." 

Even if you're not a fan of hoppy beers, you have to admit a zero-waste beer is an intriguing idea.

In the U.S. alone, over 6 billion pounds of food is wasted every year. We don't often think about it when we throw out an old(ish) banana or refuse to eat the weird, crusty end-slice of a bread loaf — but it all adds up. 

Food that was pulled out of a single garbage can in Manhattan in 2007. Photo by Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images.

Committing to a zero-waste lifestyle is an exhaustive and difficult process, and it certainly isn't manageable for everyone. But there are little things you can do to help reduce the insane amount of waste piling up all over the world. 

One of those things involves drinking a pear-flavored beer. Which, you know, ... doesn't sound too bad.

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A brewery designed a genius new six-pack that solves a big environmental problem.

Chris Gove loves the ocean so much, he named his brewery after it.

Saltwater Brewery in Delray Beach, Florida. Photo via Saltwater Brewery, used with permission.

Gove, who opened Saltwater Brewing in 2013 with four childhood friends, is an avid surfer and devotee of all things aquatic, including marine life.

The problem? Selling six-packs of beer meant producing a lot of plastic waste...

These things. Photo by Staecker/Wikimedia Commons.

...which all too frequently finds its way into the sea.

That didn't sit right with Gove and his cofounders, who decided to make ocean conservation part of Saltwater Brewing's mission from the very beginning.

"The jewel of Florida is the ocean, so we all grew up seeing tar and different plastic on the beach and when we’re surfing and fishing we’ll catch plastic bags, and it’s horrible," Gove told Upworthy.

Enter the edible six-pack ring.

A mock-up of the prototype. Photo via Saltwater Brewing, used with permission.

The rings, which Saltwater codeveloped with a New York-based ad agency, are made of spent grain leftover from the brewing process, much of which would otherwise go to waste.

The company is still perfecting the design but were encouraged by the successful production and testing of 500 prototypes last month. The rings are designed to be disposed of, but should they find their way into the ocean, they can be eaten safely by marine life.

Wait a sec, you might be thinking, "I haven't heard squat about plastic six-pack rings in forever. Didn't we solve this problem in, like, the '80s?"

Only sort of. In 1988, alarmed by reports of fish, sea birds, and turtles becoming ensnared by the rings, Congress passed a law requiring all plastic ring carriers (the industry term for those six-pack thingies) to be naturally degradable. Most are now manufactured to be photodegradable (meaning they split into tiny pieces when exposed to prolonged sunlight).

It's not a perfect solution. According to one major manufacturer, their plastic carriers take — at best — between three and four weeks to break down. But it does mostly solve the problem of animals getting trapped.

The problem now is, even after the rings break apart, the pieces can still be ingested by sea life — and wreak some major havoc.

Stuff that used to be inside a fish. Photo via Saltwater Brewery, used with permission.

A 2014 study, published in the journal Science, found that 99% percent of the plastic waste that should be in the ocean based on the most accurate available estimates — including those little tiny six-pack ring pieces — is missing, most likely because marine animals have eaten it.

"Turtles and certain fish eat jellyfish, and a lot of times balloons or pieces of plastic or plastic bags in the ocean can look like jellyfish," Neil Hammerschlag, a marine ecologist at the University of Miami, told Upworthy.

According to Hammerschlag, consuming discarded plastic can lead to serious injury — or even be a death sentence — for the animals that do so. Worse yet, discarded plastic often leeches toxic chemicals like mercury and DDT from the ocean, which then filter up the food chain, causing health problems for the larger sea creatures — and, ultimately, humans — that eat them.

Saltwater's prototype rings could be far better than the alternative.

A watermark on an illustration of the saltwater prototype rings. Photo by Saltwater Brewery, used with permission.

"I think it could be very beneficial," Hammerschlag said.

He believes that the less plastic that makes its way into the stomachs of fish, sea turtles, and sharks, the better — even if the material doesn't represent an ideal diet for those creatures.

"It’s kind of like having a Sour Patch Kid," Gove said. "You’d rather have your kid eat a Sour Patch Kid than a Lego. That’s kind of how I see it."

Gove hopes that, should the project succeed, other breweries — even major ones — will eventually follow Saltwater's lead.

Once the design is perfected, the brewery plans to run off thousands more of the rings in the next stage of development.

"We really want to inspire the whole industry and all beverage, all styles of packaging too," Gove said. "This is just the beginning."

It's a move that could earn Saltwater the gratitude of thousands of happy, unexpectedly satiated sea creatures.

Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Flickr.

"The best thing is when your garbage gets thrown into a garbage can," Hammerschlag said. "But not everyone throws their garbage in the garbage can, and sometimes when it gets thrown in a garbage can, it gets blown out, or it goes straight to the ocean. So I think this could be a great thing."

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