OnTap Magazine

OT: What inspired you to try and eliminate single use plastic at Mad Giant? EU: When the devastating impact of plastic on our oceans started to appear on social media, I immediately knew we had to do something. I walked into the brewery, looked at our terrible shrink wrapped four-packs and they just didn’t shout “I’m proud of the beer we are producing” and I decided to make the change. OT: So what are the changes that you’ve made? EU: We rebranded completely and changed all our labels from plastic dairy film labels to paper labels. Cardboard four-packs replaced the shrink wrap and we moved to closed cardboard boxes as our cases. The cases are stapled closed and then packed onto pallets. Pallet wrap plastic was ditched and replaced by cardboard corner blocks and straps. The straps are still plastic, which we hope to replace with hemp or paper straps when we manage to source them. OT: What was the most difficult aspect of cutting out plastic? EU: Finding the money to do it! It was an enormous cost to rebrand and to make new plates and dies for the labels, four- packs and boxes. OT: What kind of an impact has all of this had? EU: The estimated reduction in plastic was around 96%. Packing into cardboard doubled our packaging cost per case. OT: We understand that another brewery taking on the plastic-free challenge inspired a recent collab…? EU: Yes! Jack Black recently rebranded and also moved away from plastic shrink to paper packs. I was so happy to see that someone else cares about the planet as much as we do. It is really hard financially to justify increasing your costs while the economy is struggling but they did it. They are also a bunch of really cool people and I asked Ross if they would like to brew a collab to celebrate. He said yes and we decided to brew a New England style pale ale for spring – it’s called Jack & the Giant. I’m really, really happy with how the beer turned out and cannot wait for people to try it. It is a limited bottle release, but hopefully as many people as possible get a taste. It will be available on draught at both the Mad Giant and Jack Black tap rooms as well. OT: Do you have further plans to make Mad Giant even greener? EU: Yes definitely. Currently we are working on reducing our water usage and then we want to look at CIP chemicals that are biodegradable but we’re not yet sure if this is possible. The other big one is to buy local base malts. As soon as we can get the logistics and COAs sorted, we plan to move over to locally produced malt. OT: Finally, what would you say to breweries that are hesitant to get rid of their shrink- wrapped six-packs? EU: Grow some balls! Any brewery that distributes their beer needs plenty of packaging: bottles, labels, caps, four- pack holders…and the potential for plastic use is huge. Mad Giant’s Eben Uys tells us about his decision to get rid of as much plastic as possible, at times even putting planet before profit at his brewery. 14 | Spring 2019 | ontapmag.co.za