Part 2 To Part 1

I had to split it. Should I just hit the ground running. I assume you read part 1. If not here:

We’ll just 3…2…1…

The Bus’s sustainable theme took the approach of going through each stage of the whisky making process, particularly the waste streams they produce and looking at ways to reduce, reuse or recycle. The next stage after barley growth is the mashing and malting. Where you’re essentially brewing an 8 % beer reading to be distilled later. The process produces a lot of sedimentary waste known as brewers grain (boiled barley). And this is where it gets weird.

 So they do some normal things. Feed cattle and hog farms – similar to the Scottish practice. They use mealworms to convert it into fish food and raise trout. Standard distillery farm to table restaurant activities. They even dry some, mill as flour and use it in granola, bread, pizza, pasta. For all of these however, the wet grains need to be dried. A very energy intensive process. And with 39 million tonnes of brewers grain produced globally, a solution is needed that’s a little more concrete.

Concrete production is currently 8 % of global emissions. Which as my google search will tell you is greater than aviation and shipping. This distillery has put in a patent application for concrete made of brewers grain. I’ll say it again. They’ve turned boiled barley into concrete. Turns out if you blend the wet grain with lime it creates a concrete. And during the curing this concrete absorbs CO₂. Let’s just take a step back and imagine.

We’ve got 39 million tonnes of waste product that needs energy input to be useful and a concrete industry pushing out more emissions than Taylor Swifts jet. We could turn that 39 million tonnes or brewers grains into CO₂ absorbing concrete, whilst reducing demand on regular concrete. Oh and at the end of its life cycle the concrete can be smashed up and used as organic fertilizer. You hear something like, I just get pumped up.

On the topic of building materials they’re also promoting straw insulation. It’s another bi-product from the cereal crops using in the malting. But when you use it as insulation you’re essentially capturing CO₂ then storing it, again just a cool idea to think of en mase turning building insulation into the carbon capture industry, rather than use calcium caustic loops powered by natural gas which basically just breaks even emissions wise like the current crop of carbon capture. Not to mention you’re cutting down on synthetic insulations which are energy intensive to produce.

Bloody Nora, this is getting long I might have to split this into 3. Sorry. It’s the possibilities here, I’m getting pretty frick’en amped.