Each year, the European Commission designates one city as the "Green Capital of Europe" in recognition of their efforts towards sustainability. 2021's Green Capital is Lahti, Finland, where 99% of the town's household waste is already repurposed.
To show just how far you can go to reutilize waste to make other things, Lahti brewery Ant Brew has created a line of "Wasted Potential" summer craft brews that all use waste, ranging from fruit pulps to goose poop.
The goose poop won't actually go into the beer (although the fruit pulp will), but is instead being used in a food-safe way to smoke the malt used to make one of Ant Brew's waste-inspired beers. That particular stout will help local parks get cleaner by removing goose droppings from the premises.
Also in the lineup is a witbier that is brewed with orange peels from a local market's juice pressing station, imbued with fruit purees just past their best by date but still great as an ingredient for beer.
Other ingredients that will be used in the Wasted Potential Beers include roadside weeds, wild herbs, and mosses.
While only Finnish folk will be able to drink this beer once it's released for the summer, the entire world can take a lesson from what Ant Brew and Lahti are doing in the brewing realm.
The biggest takeaway here is that if you really put your mind to it and get creative, virtually any waste can be repurposed to make something unique and useable.
