Cheers to Singapore’s ‘sewage beer’ at climate summit
FOOD and drink, the fuel that keeps negotiators negotiating and reporters reporting, always gets a lot of attention at climate summits.
At this year’s meeting, the Australian delegation is a favourite for its complimentary coffee. Another popular spot is the Azerbaijani pavilion, where the hosts are serving strong tea from gleaming silver samovars.
And then there are the Singaporeans. They’re giving out free beer made from recycled toilet water.
Delegates and observers at the talks, held in a retrofitted football stadium on the edge of Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, don’t seem to mind. In fact, the beer’s recycling credentials might add to its appeal among the environmentally minded at this summit, known as COP29.
“At first their eyes widen,” said Samantha Thian, one of the leaders of Singapore’s youth delegation in Baku. “Then we reassure them. They’re usually coming back the next day for another.”
A hoppy pilsner called NEWBrew that comes in pastel cans decorated with solar panels, rain clouds and cityscapes, the beer is part of a collaboration between Brewerkz and PUB, Singapore’s national water agency.
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Brewerkz has been producing limited-run beers using such reclaimed water since 2018, mostly for conferences and trade shows, as a kind of festive ambassador for the water-recycling cause.
“I’ll admit it’s a bit of a gimmick, but these things do work,” said PUB chief executive Ong Tze-Ch’in in an interview.
Ensuring there is enough clean water for people to drink, grow crops and keep industries such as computer-chip fabrication running is a key challenge as global warming worsens water scarcity worldwide.
Already, roughly half of the population of the planet struggles to secure enough clean water for at least part of the year, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body. And every degree of temperature increase raises the risk of droughts and floods.
As word of the so-called sewage beer got around, some conference attendees stopped by the Singaporean pavilion for a curious taste.
Others, like Pat Heslop-Harrison, a professor of biology at the University of Leicester, just wanted a drink that didn’t involve trekking out of the stadium. It was only after he had cracked open a can that he realised he was drinking a cold beer made from recycled sewage water.
And Thian was right. He liked it so much that he came back the next day.
“I’m sure that the technology of Singapore is such that it’s second to none,” he said.
Some patrons were more sheepish about trying the beer. One taster was glad to share his review – “fresh” and “not so bitter” – but not his name, lest his boss discover he had been day-drinking at a UN summit meeting.
Another, Julian Reingold, an Athens-based journalist, stopped by for a swig as the negotiations seemed to bog down in their second week.
“If we were to drink more of that beer, I don’t know how the negotiations would turn out,” Reingold said. “Maybe better. Who knows?”
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