Repurposing Brewery Waste

          Annually, breweries produce substantial amounts of spent grains and wastewater. Although this waste is treated and repurposed occasionally, there continues to be a large amount of excess waste leftover. It is critical that these products are properly disposed or recycled because they can damage the atmosphere and dramatically acidify large bodies of water. To mitigate the large volume of waste, the spent grains and wastewater can be repurposed into biodegradable bioplastics and electricity respectively. These methods are both feasible and profitable for breweries as they can recycle and treat their waste on-site at an affordable price. Our studies were conducted at home to measure the amount of energy produced from brewery wastewater (collected from our school’s brewery class and a local NYC brewery). The strength of the bioplastics were also tested using several different varying recipes. This project offers two alternative and sustainable approaches to recycling the waste into versatile products.