Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity. From once in a lifetime floods and bushfires, to species extinction, pollution and proliferation of disease – it is becoming harder to ignore the environmental impacts of our fast-paced consumerism and the industries that sustain this.
The production, distribution and consumption of many fast-moving consumer goods contribute substantially to climate change, principally through releasing greenhouse gas emissions. Alcohol is no exception. Work by the Water Footprint Network found that it takes around 870l of water to produce 1l of wine. Estimates suggest that the production of 1l of beer produces between 510 and 842g of CO2. Estimates often depend on the production of packaging which produces substantial CO2 emissions. For example, beer can emissions from the manufacturing of the can alone are estimated at over 340,000 tonnes of CO2 annually in the United Kingdom.
Climate change can also impact on consumption. A recent review found that climate change-related events such as hurricanes and fires were associated in some circumstances with increased substance use, and demand for services, alongside changes in drug availability and service disruption. The review concludes by highlighting that these impacts are unevenly distributed:
…the impacts of climate change on AoD [alcohol and other drugs] use are highly contextual and situated, and responsive to interactions between types of climate change-related hazards, socio-economic vulnerabilities, and material conditions experienced in a place and time.”
Importantly, much can be done to address this. Policies and measures designed to reduce emissions generated by transport, consumption, and other forms of energy use have potential to produce major health co-benefits.
It is in light of these potential co-benefits that we discuss, in our recent commentary, the importance of strengthening the evidence base on alcohol industry commercial determinants, addressing inequalities, and providing product advice to help alcohol consumers choose lower-carbon options. As public health researchers we already have methodological expertise and experience to produce the evidence needed to inform regulation and efforts by alcohol producers and consumers to minimise their contributions to environmental harms. For example, we can collect data on water use, deforestation, soil depletion, and the energy used in the production of alcohol. We can document the environmental harm of production, consumption, and waste process for human and planetary health. Following growing examinations of lobbying strategies used by the alcohol industry, public health researchers could also examine the corporate social responsibility activities, in which the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the industries’ actions related to the environment feature prominently. Finally, we can raise awareness of the links between the environmental impact of alcohol and health outcomes, assisting consumers to choose lower carbon generating alcohol products.
Past and current approaches to reducing alcohol consumption often include highlighting the individual health harms of consumption, emphasising the harms to others through events such as road accidents, and making alcohol less affordable based on the alcohol volume of products. To our knowledge, no alcohol interventions have highlighted the environmental harms of drinking alcohol to motivate reduced consumption. This is despite evidence that environmental concerns are a significant motivator for other types of behaviour change, including purchasing decisions. Harnessing the salience of environmental harms from alcohol within interventions may be an untapped opportunity to address the health harms from alcohol consumption. Moreover, these outcomes are synergistic – climate concerns may be leveraged to encourage better consumption choices and at the same time, encouraging low-carbon and environmentally informed drinking choices can have concomitant health benefits, including reducing burdens on our health and emergency response systems.
Finally, alcohol policy is the responsibility of governments at various levels and should not be considered only within the jurisdiction of health departments. Companies that produce alcohol are resistant to measures that will reduce their profits, even where alcohol’s harms are evident. Addressing the contribution of fast-moving consumer goods such as alcohol to climate change requires global, intersectoral, and intragovernmental coordination.
While discussion about the climate impacts of food production and consumption is relatively widespread, the contributions of alcohol to environmental damage is rarely considered. Alcohol policy and regulation should incorporate measures to reduce the environmental degradation and carbon emissions that arise from alcohol production and consumption. Ensuring this will not only mitigate climate change, but will have concomitant benefits for individual health and society more broadly.
Written by Dr Megan Cook and Professor Sarah MacLean, Centre for Alcohol Policy Research (CAPR), School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University.
All IAS Blogposts are published with the permission of the author. The views expressed are solely the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Institute of Alcohol Studies.