Eurostar has come up with an interesting solution to its food waste problem. Rather than throwing its uneaten sandwiches into landfill, the company has started transforming them into craft beer.
Since 2024, the high-speed rail operator has been working with French brewery Pain de Minuit to recycle unused sandwiches from Eurostar Premier continental routes. According to the company’s general secretary Gareth Williams, it is working to extend the project to cross-Channel routes.
How is bread turned into beer?
Using old bread to brew beer is nothing new. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that the Sumerians, one of the world’s oldest civilisations, used old bread crusts to brew their beer, rather than the usual grains, water and yeast.
In recent years, companies have drawn inspiration from ancient recipes to find new ways to brew beer using unwanted bread - and Belgian companies have been at the forefront of these efforts.
The Brussels Beer Project has been making bread-based brews for over a decade. The company collects unsold bread from bakeries and uses it to replace 20% of the malt (a type of cereal grain) in the beer-making process.
According to the Brussels Beer Project, making beer in this way gives “a pleasant caramel/toasty edge to the palate”.
The company says it uses a simple process to brew bread-based beer. First, they dry the bread at a low temperature and grind it into flour. Then, they mix the flour with barley malt to brew the beer. To ensure nothing is wasted, they collect the spent grain and dry it so it can be re-used in bread-making.
How does using bread to brew beer help the environment?
Food waste is a serious environmental problem. Around a third of all food produced globally is wasted, accounting for as much as 10% of greenhouse gas emissions.
People waste huge quantities of bread in particular. Globally, nearly a million tonnes of bread is binned every year – or around 24 million slices each day.
Salvaging uneaten bread to brew beer helps the environment in two important ways.
First, saving it from landfill prevents the release of methane, a gas known to have a significant impact on global warming.
Second, it reduces the amount of carbon emissions released in the beer brewing process.
Brewing beer is very energy-intensive. Around half its environmental impact comes during the production of malt – a vital component for beer production.
Farming malt has a negative impact on the environment in several ways, including through water use, loss of biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions.
By using unwanted bread as a substitute for grain, brewers can make a product which is significantly more environmentally sustainable.
