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If you're a white supremacist, I imagine drinking beer (or any other alcoholic beverage) is a nice way to relax and tune out the fact that you're a terrible person who's helping set human progress back at a rate the bubonic plague would be proud of. But for some self-professed white supremacists, it wasn't quite so easy on a June weekend in Germany back in 2019.

According to Newsweek, the hundreds of neo-Nazis who flocked to the "Shield and Sword Festival" in Ostritz found themselves uncomfortably dry when a court imposed a liquor ban at their gathering of hateful bigots who also like to listen to awful music together. The ban's aim was to prevent any violence that might erupt (you know it would...) and the police confiscated more than a thousand gallons of alcohol from those attending the weekend-long event. They even posted pictures on Twitter of the alcohol they'd removed from participants.





But that's only half the story.

Residents of the town of Ostritz, who've had to deal with the bigots before (they threw the same festival last year on Hitler's birthday), knew that the ban wouldn't stop the festival-goers from trying to obtain more alcohol while in town. So the townspeople got together a week before the festival and devised a plan which would truly make the white supremacists focus on how terrible neo-Nazi music is: They bought up the entire town's beer supply.

"We wanted to dry the Nazis out," Georg Salditt, a local activist, told reporters. "We thought, if an alcohol ban is coming, we'll empty the shelves at the Penny [supermarket]."

"For us it's important to send the message from Ostritz that there are people here who won't tolerate this, who say 'we have different values here, we're setting an example..." an unidentified local woman told ZDF Television.

At the same time the festival was going on, residents also staged two counter-protests and put on a "Peace Festival" to drive home the point that bigotry wasn't welcome. If the festival is held in the same town again next year, ticket-buyers should be aware that Ostritz isn't playing around when it says that white supremacists aren't welcome.

There's some good news, too: Aside from the fact that residents aren't afraid to send the message that they're intolerant of intolerance, attendance to the far-right music festival has drastically decreased in the past year. In 2018, 1,200 people attended, according to the BBC. This year? Approximately 500-600. Here's hoping the festival won't have a return engagement next year.


This article originally appeared on 6.24.19

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.

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."

Think long and hard about your favorite thing to eat.

Take in all the delicious smells. The sheer joy from every last bite, sip, chomp, or slurp.


GIF via "Key & Peele."

Now, think long and hard about having to say goodbye to your favorite food forever.

GIF via "Adventure Time."

Because some of America's favorite foods and drinks won't make it much longer.

Yes, these sweet and savory delights are all at risk of experiencing a significant shortage, some as early as 2030.

These are five of the treats at stake and what you can do to stop them from disappearing:

1. Peanut butter. A moment of silence for all that naked toast, y'all.

You eat it by the spoonful when you're alone in your apartment, drop it in smoothies, and turn an ordinary sauce into a can't-miss satay. Americans gobble it up, consuming about three and a half pounds of peanut butter per person each year. It's an affordable pantry staple, packed with protein, and freaking delicious.

Oh yeah, and it's disappearing from the Earth.

Borderline pornographic photo by Dan McKay/Flickr.

It's really hard to grow a peanut, as the plants are kind of temperamental. They need just the right combination of sun and rain to survive each year. Some of the southeastern states where peanuts grow have experienced droughts in the past few years, and peanut plants have simply shriveled up.

Farmers and agricultural researchers are working on drought-resistant varieties, but the big culprit, climate change, isn't going away.

2. Beer. Sweet, sweet beer.

It takes a few ingredients to brew a great beer, including hops. Hops are the flowers making your beer super tasty, and they're primarily grown in the Pacific Northwest. But due to rising temperatures and a dwindling water supply, hop yields have decreased significantly.

Left: Hops on the vine. Photo by The mad Penguin/Flickr. Right: A flight of beers. Photo by Lauren Topor/Flickr.

In March, more than 40 breweries large and small signed on to the Climate Declaration, a group of businesses urging policymakers to act on climate change. Many of those breweries have already done their part to help make their businesses sustainable, but they need some assistance at the top to make a lasting impact.

3. Chocolate. Good heavens. What have we done?

To make delicious chocolate chips, Nutella, and other fudgy delights, you need cocoa. A whopping 70% of the world's cocoa supply comes from West African nations like Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire.

I want to go to there. Photo by Various Brennemans/Flickr.

According to a study from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, this region is predicted to experience a 2-degree (Celsius) temperature change by 2050. This may not seem like much, but more water will evaporate from the air and leaves, leaving little behind for cocoa plants. These areas will become inadequate for cocoa production as early as 2030.

4. Coffee. Nature's most aromatic alarm clock.

Ever want to feel alive again, or at the very least somewhat awake? Time to make a move on climate change, amigo.

Photo by Susanne Nilsson/Flickr.

Different varieties of coffee are so closely adapted to their specific region and climate zone that even a half-degree increase can have a noticeable impact. Warmer temperatures can expand the reach of bugs and fungi that prey on coffee plants. In fact, three of the top five coffee-growing countries in the world (India, Costa Rica, and Ethiopia) have seen a significant drop in yield.

And you may be thinking, "Fine, I'll switch to tea." Not so fast. Tea farmers are experiencing problems of their own.

5. All things pumpkin. Yes, even the lattes.

Pumpkin pie. Pumpkin bread. Pumpkin cake. If you've been to a grocery store the past six weeks, you know this list could be very long. And all of it is at risk because of the shrinking pumpkin crop.

Is this the last pumpkin pie ever? No, but don't get complacent with the amount of pumpkin in your life. Photo by David Goehring/Flickr.

Libby's, the company behind 80% of the world's processed pumpkin, suffered a major shortage this year due to an exceptionally soggy summer at its Illinois farm. In the past 100 years, Illinois has experienced a 10% increase in precipitation. And three of the four wettest years in Illinois have happened since 2010.

"We're fairly certain that's tied to climate change," Jim Angel, a state climatologist for the Illinois State Water Survey, told Scientific American.

While none of these foods are critical for our survival, their sharp declines (and price increases) may spur more people to act.

We may not notice if there are fewer snow leopards or if it's a little bit warmer this winter. But when there are just a few cans of pumpkin on the shelf or our morning coffee doubles in price, more and more of us will start to ask questions, take action, and demand change.

If you weren't already doing everything you can to fight climate change, then do it for your favorite indulgence.

Call your representatives, support sustainable industries, let your voice be heard.

Because after all chocolate, beer, and peanut butter (and the growers who make them possible) have done for us, it's time we return the favor.

GIF via cinematic tour de force "Armageddon."