Published
Video length: 7 min
Recycling: anti-waste beer made from bread crumbs
What to do with old bread? For several years, breweries have been collecting unsold bread from bakers and using day-old bread to replace some of the barley. A way to save raw materials and energy.
(France 2)
What to do with old bread? For several years, breweries have been collecting unsold bread from bakers and using day-old bread to replace some of the barley. A way to save raw materials and energy.
Martin Marescaux, a brewer, collects unsold bread and transforms it into beer. First stop that day in England, where he comes to collect 30 kilos of bread from Steven Oxford, a baker, which he will bring back to France by kitesurfing. “At home, we recycle old bread into sausages or pudding. I think the idea of making beer out of it is great.”Steven confides. With his bread, Martin will make 3,000 bottles. Every year, he recycles 1,500 tons of bread in his two breweries.
In Tarn, Cédric Spazzi has also developed an anti-waste recipe: he replaces part of the barley with stale bread. A saving, and character for the beer. “We have this little fat of rye in the mouth, it’s very interesting”he adds.
Every year in France, “150,000 tons of bread go in the trash”says journalist Valérie Heurtel on the 1pm news set. Another anti-waste idea for breweries: recycle their waste. Once the beer has been brewed and filtered, the spent grain, “long gone to the farms to feed the animals”is now of interest to biscuit manufacturers, who are making crackers from them. As for fruit waste, it is possible to make Piñatex, a material made from pineapple stems, but also “leather” from apples or grapes.
