The Beer Store- Demystified

I have to admit that the beer distribution systems of other countries usually don't interest me, but I have made an exception to Canada for two reasons:

1. I've visited Canada more than any other country.
2. The cult classic Strange Brew.

In this pivotal scene the McKinsie brothers, who are on a quest to replace their father's beer, visit a Beer Store in search of free beer. Here I saw my first glimpse of a magical store that sells nothing but beer. The scene shows that the Beer Store is a place with it's own ritual, language and quirks.

According to the movie, beer is not out for display rather you relay your order (a case of 24 beers can be called a two-four) to a clerk who calls out the order into a microphone. Moments later a case of beer flies through a hole in the wall down a belt of rollers to the clerk.

With such a strange system I was certain that such a place was merely a concoction of Hollywood fancy. This was so ingrained in my mind as the Myth of The Beer Store that I almost didn't believe my eyes on my first trip to Canada when I saw a truck bearing the iconic store's name.

I ended up not following up that first truck siting with a visit as I wasn't a beer drinker at the time. As my loyal readers know, this status has recently changed so when I walked by a The Beer Store not too long ago I popped in. Much like that scene in Strange Brew, I saw empty beer bottles adorning the wall and a magical hole in the wall through which the beer traveled once it was ordered.

Days later I realized that there were others like myself who knew next to nothing about The Beer Store and I should have learned what I could and reported it here. After I realized my folly, I promised myself that I'd make up for the mistake on my next visit to Canada.

Prior to my trip, I contacted The Beer Store and they not only agreed to let me take pictures, but they offered to take me on a tour of one of their newer stores in Waterloo, Ontario. On my visit, I learned much more about The Beer Store than I ever expected.

The store that I visited wasn't of the older style with the hole in the wall, but rather of a newer style which actually allows you to see the beer before you commit to buying it. Since I've only ever purchased beer that I could see and touch, this appealed to me greatly even though part of the magic of The Beer Store seemed to be lost with the absence of this hole.

The main portion of the store was dedicated to showcasing and storing a huge variety of Canadian beers along with some prerequisite imports. While you will find the large American brands such as Budweiser, the floor is dominated by major Canadian brands such as Molson, Labatt and Sleeman who happen to own The Beer Store. The American brands are rightly delegated to the sidelines here.

Unfortunately you won't find any craft beer from the States at The Beer Store. However, there are some Canadian craft beers available though they can be easy to miss if you aren't looking for them as the major brands get more shelf space with their mighty stacks of two-fours. The single beer selection, which I prefer to bring home with me, are almost entirely in cans and there are no ciders to speak of though I did spot a few meads. Still, if you are looking for some every day beer brewed right in Canada, there really isn't a better choice.

The Beer Store's main rival is the government, that is, the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario). While The Beer Store has locally brewed beers covered, the LCBO imports quite a few specially brews, mostly from Europe. Here's where you'll find more ciders than you can shake a stick at as well as more microbrews from Canada. What you won't find is a lot of the mass produced Canadian beer as The Beer Store has that market cornered.

Since I had visited both the LCBO and The Beer Store before none of this was completely unexpected, but what came next was. The Beer Store is a leader when it comes to recycling. For all of Ontario, The Beer Store handles the customer level returns of all alcohol containers, and I do mean all. Bottles and cans for beer are a given, but they also handle liquor bottles, wine bottles and even the bags that come in box wine.

It has always bugged me that the United States doesn't have deposits on wine and liquor bottles, but it looks like Ontario has this figured out. With all of these containers only redeemable at one place, it forces anyone wanting their deposit back to visit The Beer Store wether they got their beer at the LCBO or even at a local brewery. This is a brilliant marketing plan.

In Massachusetts you must return your empties to a store that sells that particular brand. Believe me when I tell you that this is beyond annoying. Heaven help you if someone gives you a 6 pack of something that you've never seen before.

Another thing that grinds my gears about our recycling program stateside is that we automatically crush and reprocess bottles when it's much more energy efficient to give glass a good wash and reuse them again. In many countries, including Canada, they return glass bottles to the breweries who wash and reuse them. The rings around the bottles are a testament to how many times they've been reused. Ultimately they do get melted down, but not before they've seen between 12 and 15 trips through a brewery.

I went to The Beer Store wanting to find out more about that mysterious hole in the wall, but I walked away jealous of a provinces recycling program. It's funny how these things turn out. The mystery isn't all gone though. They tell me that after a while The Beer Stores gain a smell that is all their own thanks to all of the bottle returns. I guess I'll have something forward to on my next visit to Canada.

Special thanks go out to Catherine, Dave and Craig of The Beer Store for taking time out of their schedules to talk to me, give me a tour and answer all of my endless questions- no, there is not an Elsinore brewery and yes, you have to go to the brewery if you want free beer.

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A Revisit to Hotel Soap Waste

As my faithful readers will recall, I wrote about a marketing ploy in which a soap manufacturer was marketing a new soap shape that supposedly reduced waste. I discussed this in Holey Soap: When Hotels and Green Marketing Collide. Since then, there have been others that have also found this product silly including Green Chemicals and Treehugger.com.

While it was satisfying to expose this marketing ploy, I felt that I left the problem only partially resolved. Sure, the truth was now out there, but what about the other unanswered questions?
1. Does the soap break down faster than a normal bar?
2. What alternatives are there for hotels looking to reduce their environmental impact when it comes to soap usage?

In this article, I hope to explore these two points.

After the Holey Soap was originally posted, I tried the holey soap and found that, as frequent reader and commenter Tom pointed out, the hollow nature of the bar caused it to break apart faster than a solid bar. This rapid breakdown was due to the increased surface area inherent to the design. The resulting pieces were not at all comfortable to use as the bar had only been designed to be comfortable when intact; I ended up mashing them together in order to continue using the bar. Unfortunately, I didn't take notes on the breakdown of the soap, but it seemed that the soap fractured after about 5 days and was completely used up within about 2 weeks.

I expected a bar with the weight of the holey soap (50 grams) to last quite a bit longer than it did. Unfortunately, I don't have another bar, so I'll have to leave a solid comparison of soaps to someone else. All things considered, this is not a product that can deliver on its claims, but what are the alternatives for a hotel looking for greener soap?

Traditional Bars
Traditional bars of similar or lesser weight will last longer than the hollow soap, so they won't need to be replaced as frequently. Finding the correct size and shape is difficult though, and guests will rarely finish a bar to completion so there is still a waste issue. With a larger bar, a lot of soap will be thrown away. With a smaller bar, more packaging waste generated each time the bar is replaced. Hotels must find a balance between these two waste generators.

Bulk Body Wash/Shampoo
This option is popular in some parts of Europe and in Asia. A liquid soap dispenser mounted in the shower stall, and guests use what they need. The dispenser is refilled from a larger container so that material and packaging waste is reduced. While I really like this option, it is not without problems. Liquid soap has a lot of water in it, weighs more, it takes up more space in a truck and in turn, has a higher carbon footprint than bar soap.

Bar soap is a dry good, so it is cheaper to ship per amount of usable product, but it is wasteful in the areas of product usage and packaging. Liquid soap has a bigger carbon footprint, but it is superior in the waste and packaging areas. If only there was a product that could be parsed out of a dispenser like liquid soap, but was dry and easy to ship...

Powdered Soap
Rarely seen now but still available, a powdered soap could fit the bill nicely. The powdered soap that I've used in the past has worked quite well, but it was formulated as a hand soap which may not work so well for the rest of the body. A new powdered soap for washing the entire body would be needed. There would also need to be a dispenser in or near the shower, but, if well executed, it may be the best solution to the hotel shower soap problem yet.

I'm sure that this article will generate more questions that need to be explored, but, right now, I feel much better about the situation as alternatives to this product have now been presented. Please feel free to comment about this article in the comments section below.



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Green Travel Technique: The Lending Library

Until recently, I worked in an office with a team of 4 or 5 travelers; I'm still working with this group, but I'm now working remotely. Before I left, I was able to help establish a lending library for our department. Being that we all travel quite a bit, some travel distractions are required. For most of us, that includes books and magazines.

Objectives:
We had all been purchasing printed materials and maintaining individual libraries that would only be read once and then forget about. By pooling our resources, we accomplished several things.

1. Reduction of the costs of travel distractions.
2. Exposing coworkers to genres that they might not otherwise explore (such as books on writing and grammar).
3. Reduction of the environmental impact by circulating materials to others, and by buying used books.

In addition to these primary objectives, establishing a lending library gave me a good excuse to subscribe to Wired and Popular Mechanics.

What to Stock:
While the lending library wasn't originally my idea, I did my best to give it a good start. We figured that a stock of books and DVDs would be the most useful, so I scoured my DVD collection for some unloved DVDs. This is how I finally got rid of my twice-watched copy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show that I'd been carrying around with me for far too many years. The person that gave it to me was well intentioned, but I really couldn't get into it. I mean, you don't know that it's a science fiction movie until the last 10 minutes. I also unloaded a copy of Gladiator which I had never gotten around to unwrapping.

As for books, my personal library consists of mostly cookbooks, which hardly makes for interesting airplane reading for most people (I guess I'm in the minority here), so I decided to track down some books. Since there was no budget for this project, I started hitting the local thrift shops that specialized in used books. The books were cheap, in plentiful supply and the selection was decent. The only problem with this was that I was only buying books that I wanted to read. This consisted primarily of Science Fiction and James Bond novels.

My wife noticed this trend in the small stacks of books that I would bring home, and she offered to come along with me on my next outing to ensure that there was a little more balance in the initial selection of the lending library. She has read a lot more books than I have, most of these being decidedly not Science Fiction, so I accepted her offer.

Amongst the next group of books was a well-loved copy of Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice which I still haven't read. There is a version titled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I will read in the eventuality that a copy makes it my way. I can just imagine it now...

"Mr. Darcy has turned into a zombie! Quick, shoot him in the head with a Victorian era
elephant gun!"

Yeah, I'd read that. If I do get a copy, I'll give you one guess as to where it will wind up after I've finished it (some of my coworkers really love zombies).

It was about this time that Amazon was having one of their regular magazine sales, so I took a look. For about $45, I was able to buy two-year subscriptions to Popular Mechanics and Wired as well as a one-year subscription to Mac Life.

As soon as we had a fairly decent stock of books, DVDs and a place to keep everything, the announcement was made that the library was open. It runs on the following system:
You can take anything you want; just bring it back when you are done. Add something to the library as you wish.
How it's Going:
The lending library started off slowly, but as the magazines started coming in, it began to gain some momentum with new books showing up regularly. I started to move magazines over two months old to a common area, and then I'd recycle those after another two months.

Since the initial start of the lending library, we've expanded to include language handbooks and maps.

While it is true that electronic books, GPS devices and pocket translators are becoming cheaper and easier to use, they will always be limited to the batteries that you can carry. For now, I'll stick to printed material.

The Next Step:
Right now, the lending library is limited to one department, but I hope that this is eventually extended to all of the travelers within the company once a little more momentum is gained.

What I would really love to see would be for there to be similar, larger lending libraries that would be available to the public. Think of how great that would be. These libraries could be run by cheery, book-loving government employees. Nah, it would never work.

Your Turn:
What do you think of having a small lending library for just a handful of people? Have you started something similar at your workplace? How did it go? Please leave a comment below.

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My Take on Subways

During my travels, I try to take public transportation as often as possible. When I visit large cities, this usually means catching the subway, and I’m proud to say that I’ve ridden quite a few. Subways are an inexpensive way to get around, they are much more environmentally friendly than taxis and less frustrating than attempting to navigate a new city by car.

There’s something that I just love about subways. Perhaps it’s because I grew up in an area that didn’t have them or perhaps something in my brain switched on that time I fell asleep watching The Warriors. Whatever it is, I love taking the subway whenever I get the chance.
There’s always a slight learning curve while riding a new subway system for the first time. In addition to figuring out your route using an often complicated map which is in either tiny print or embedded into the wall (using either makes you look like a tourist), you have to figure out fares, transfers and how to get through the turnstile gate while carrying over 100 lbs of equipment without getting stuck, but maybe that last one is just me. Once all that is sorted, you have to find the right track, lugging said equipment up and down stairs if you can’t find an elevator.

After becoming oriented to it, the subway is an excellent way to get around town. While subway routes can be difficult to sort out, you can get a head start on the basics from the subway’s website. I usually investigate fares and print out a copy of the subway system map before I arrive at a new city.
Throughout the world, you’ll find subways in some of the more populous cities. While there are some vague similarities between them (you have to pay, they use trains and they offer excellent people watching opportunities) they are all different in ways that make them their own with architectural elements, artwork or something as novel as cleanliness.

Below is a list of all of the subways that I have ridden, along with a brief comment about each one:

Moscow, Russia: Beautiful Art Deco elements in some stations, interesting ring track around the city center.
Boston, MA, USA: Efficient and it goes to where I’ve needed to go. Just avoid it before, during and after the St. Patty’s Day parade and after the Red Sox lose a ballgame.
Philadelphia, PA, USA: I’ve only used this subway once, but they used tokens at the time of my visit.
Toronto, Canada: A great system that still runs on tokens, generally full of Canadians.
Washington, DC, USA: Slightly confusing with direction changes in the tracks, but pretty good at moving people around.
New York, NY, USA: Iconic, smells of vomit from time to time. Just watch out for roaming gangs of mimes.
Santiago, Chile: Cleanest subway I’ve ever seen.
London, UK: Mind the gap signs are plentiful here. You can buy T-shirts suggesting other things to do to the gap.
Paris, France: Beautiful Art Nuevo stations, very confusing to get anywhere.

There’s my brief take on subways. They may not be exciting to everyone, but I certainly enjoy learning a new system when the opportunity arises.

If I had to pick a favorite, I think that I would have go with New York on account of its tight links to American pop culture, but I think that the Metro in Paris could definitely grow on me once I figured it out. What’s your favorite subway system and why?

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Holey Soap: When Hotels and Green Marketing Collide

Discovering the unexpected is one of the great joys of traveling. I travel for business and sometimes find it hard to leave my hotel to do exploring. You might think that this limits my opportunities to be surprised, but you'd be wrong.

Just recently, I visited the Atherton Hotel in State College, PA. During the course of my regular routine of checking out the hotel room (see: Hotel Room Rituals), I noticed that there was something different about the toiletries provided in the bathroom. Namely, the soap had a big hole in it.Upon closer inspection, I discovered that the whole toiletry line was called Green Natura, which focused on sustainable packaging and waste reduction. Never being one to resist the opportunity to try something new, I had to try out the line and take some pictures.

The bottles are made from a biodegradable Polystarch Material (corn based). While the bottles did a good job of holding the liquids in, they were quite rigid, making squeezing the product out of them very difficult. The shampoo and conditioner within the bottles were altogether unremarkable.

The soap packaging claims that it has been specially designed to reduce waste by removing the middle part that is present in traditionally shaped soap bars.

I don't know if this is a big problem in hotels, but someone thinks that it is. I always do my best to use just one bar of soap during my stay, but I often find that the cleaning crew throws out my half used soap, forcing me to use another bar of soap. I think that a hotel could reduce its waste more effectively by changing a simple protocol rather than purchasing some fancy soap.

It seems that this "bar" of soap is merely an invention of a marketing department trying to sell a new product. Of course, it's harder to make a profit by trying to convince people to change their behaviors (unless the change is to buy something). It's almost enough to make me want to start carrying around a proper bar of soap with me on my travels.

Performance-wise, I think this was a decent "bar" of soap, but the shape felt harsh. The center edges could have been a bit more rounded. I felt as if I was going to give myself bruises on my first use. This problem was resolved after my first shower with it.

There you have it: soap with a big hole in it. It feels like a marketing ploy to me, what do you think?

UPDATE: I wrote a follow up piece about this soap called A Revisit to Hotel Soap Waste.

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Travel Gear Highlight: Sporks and Chopsticks

I've written briefly about the environmental responsibility that travelers have in 11 Usable Tips for Greener Travel. Today I'd like to continue that thought as I focus on two items that I've carried on my travels for the last couple years which have reduced my waste along the way. When I visit a restaurant that offers plastic silverware or wooden chopsticks I decline those and pull out my own. Sometimes I get some funny looks or people who insist I need a fork, but I persist because it's the right thing to do.

I purchased a Titanium spork a few years back since I figured that if someone went to the trouble to manufacture sporks out of Titanium then I should probably own one. At this point I will admit to owning a spork collection that is much larger than a spork collection that most people would care to admit to owning.

For the uninitiated a spork is a spoon/fork hybrid with the tines of a fork and the bowl of a spoon. The spork is one of those utensils that doesn't do any one thing particularly well, but rather it does two things poorly with a great amount of flare. The spork should not be confused with the foon (fork/spoon) or the sporf (spoon/fork/knife). I am fairly certain that there is a special hell for the users of foons.

NOTE: The rivalry between fans of sporks and foons runs very deeply for reasons that no one is quite sure about.

At any rate, my Titanium spork was acquired at REI and it has proven useful on many occasions. At first I found it handy when I forgot to pick up a fork at a takeout place, but more and more I've been actively avoiding plastic forks in favor of this reusable and sturdy multi-utensil.


Last year when I was in Taiwan I had one of my first meals at a food stall in an alley. While I was there a group of schoolgirls come in to eat lunch. One of these girls pulled out a small plastic case, and she proceeded to assemble a set of full length chopsticks. I had never seen anything like this before, and at that moment I knew I what kind of souvenir I was bringing back home with me.

After visiting a couple shops in Taipei I found my prize. These simple chopsticks are really cool, and they screw together at the midpoint like a pool cue. While shopping for these I also found a model of chopsticks that telescoped out from an impossibly small length. I figured these would be difficult to clean so I opted for a slightly easier to clean style.

The pair that I ended up with has traveled with me ever since. The case is worn and it's now held together with electrical tape but I've grown to love the set as part of my regular travel gear.

I know it's just a fork here and a pair of chopsticks there, but every little bit counts in what we can keep out of the landfills. Together the travelers of the world can make a difference.

Do you carry any utensils with you on your travels?

This post has been featured in the Green Travel Blog Carnival, check it out for more green travel related goodness.

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11 Usable Tips for Greener Traveling

There are lots of lists of tips you can find on greener traveling so why am I making another list? I'll tell you why. Most of those lists are full of suggestions that don't strike me as practical such as bringing home half used bars of soap and not using the airplane lavatories (seriously, those are actual tips that I found). My tips are actually usable and are all things that I have done or things that I'm planning to do on my next trip.

As you know I travel for work. A while back I started to think about what my environmental impact was as a frequent traveler. I didn't look up my Carbon footprint because most of my travel is flying and I didn't want to become depressed about it. What did happen was that I started thinking about all the little things that I could do other than cutting out my air travel. Thanks to some spirited discussions with coworkers and some internet searches I've come up with a list that works for me and I'd like to share it with you.

1. Unplug Unnecessary Electronic Devices:
If you unplug devices that don't need to be on then they won't be using standby power while you are away.

This starts before I even go on a trip. At my desk I have a couple devices that won't be in use while I'm out of the office plugged into a power strip , I just unplug the power strip and away I go.

When at a hotel be sure to unplug power adapters that you might have used in the night rather than leaving them plugged in while you are out for the day.

2. Use a Travel Mug:
Many hot cups are not recyclable due to a plastic that is used in them, that's waste that just doesn't need to be there. Reusing coffee cups helps but a reusable travel mug is even better.

I also sent Starbucks an e-mail about offering recycling for their cups at airports and I did get a nice form letter back.

3. Walk or Take Public Transportation:
Take public transportation or walk to your destination as often as you can manage.

Most cities will have a fairly good public transportation website to help you plan your routes before you arrive. I always feel a little better about my trips when I can avoid taking taxis.

There are a couple things to keep in mind if you are planning on using public transportation. Route schedules can vary at different times of day and different days of the week, unless you are sure about the schedule you would be good to have a plan B. Failure to do so could mean that you are stuck in a thunder storm in Germany waiting for the bus for an hour.

Secondly you should consider the issue of safety. If taking public transportation in a particular city gives you the feeling that you are unsafe then please find a safer option.

4. Turn Off Lights When You Leave:
This one is really basic and almost didn't make the list but it's good to keep in mind. Turning off the lights is something that we do when we are at home so it makes sense to turn the lights in your hotel room off when you leave.

5. Turn Off the AC When You Leave:
It's wasteful to keep the AC on all day when no one is in the room. Some hotels have automated systems that control the temperature, so sometimes you can't do anything about this but if it's possible to turn it off you should.

I really never thought about doing this until I saw the tip on another site but it makes a lot of sense.

6. Rent a Hybrid:
Some car rental firms will now let you rent a hybrid. While it's best to take public transportation there are times you just need to rent a car, asking if a hybrid is available is easy enough to do. Even if they don't have any hybrids available they'll make note of the request and that could have an impact down the road when they go to renew the rental fleet.

7. Reuse Towels:
Hang up the towels to dry so they don't get washed every day.

This one has been around for ages and I know you've seen those little cards in the hotel bathrooms asking you to conserve resources. I guess there are people that want them replaced daily but that was always sounded strange to me.

8. Carry a Reusable Water Bottle:
Nalgene bottles are widely available and do a great job. Filling the bottle up at the airport just past security works for me most of the time.

If you don't have one of these then you could always reuse a regular water bottle. I think they are good for 3-4 uses until they start doing strange things. In foreign countries I have found heavy plastic bottles that are washed and reused, I've occasionally used these as well.

9. Avoid Fast Food
In addition to being really bad for you fast food usually comes with far more packaging than you need. This includes too many paper napkins, utensils that you won't use and all of those little packets of ketchup.

You are on the road, treat yourself to some real food at a place that has actual silverware instead of disposable utensils.

Local restaurants are also more likely to be using local produce. This means a fresher product that hasn't been trucked hundreds of miles for your enjoyment.

10. Share Magazines With Other Travelers
When traveling you can often find magazines that have been left behind by other travelers. Instead of tossing the magazine they simply leave it on a chair near the gate for someone else to pick up and read. Books can also be shared in this fashion.

Another option if you happen to work with a number of frequent travelers is to start a lending library at work. We've just started one of these at my workplace and it looks to be getting a good start. I've been seeding the library with books that I find at thrift stores so we can keep even more paper from the landfill and recycling center.

11. Take Your Recyclables Off the Plane
If your airline doesn't have an in-flight recycling program then carry your recyclables off the plane for proper disposal.

I was on a United flight recently and was surprised to hear a flight attendant say that they don't have a program for recycling waste collected on the plane. All those cans that they provide are just getting thrown out along with the newspapers and styrofoam cups. In addition to carrying off my recyclable goods I've sent United an e-mail and I hope to get another form letter response back. If you'd like to join me in this effort please feel free to contact United.

Wrapping up
Well there you have it, some simple and manageable tips to travel a little greener. While these things might not seem to do much you should keep in mind that there are large numbers of business travelers out there so the little things will really add up quickly.

I invite you to join me in seeing that all of these little things do add up and if you see something that a company or group could be doing to help please stand up and be heard.

My short list is far from complete and I see it as a starting point. If you have any tips for traveling greener please add a comment to this post, I'd love to see them.

For further reading on greener traveling I'd recommend GoGreenTravelGreen.com

This post was mentioned in the Green Travel Carnival. Thanks to the Perceptive Travel Blog for the link.

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Coming Soon: The Curse of the German Asterisk