Reduce Your Holiday Drinking Footprint With 6 Handy Tips For Zero-Waste Cheers
Food and drinking cultures go hand in hand with sustainability and an environmentally conscious approach towards consuming our most favoured dishes. From reducing waste in the kitchen by putting veggie peels and skins into broths to making compost at home for all biodegradable garbage, we all contribute our two cents to work towards greener and cleaner living. Drinking is no different and it is quite possible to consciously figure out ways to ensure that we minimise waste and reduce liquor footprint during the holidays!
This means, you can engage in festive fun while reducing the production of plastic or non-recyclable waste and limit how much you buy whilst looking for products that are made with an approach towards minimising CO2 emissions. As a party planner, you can employ simple hacks like avoiding plastic glasses and using steel or glass barware and accessories and buying recyclable cans instead of plastic bottles of juice or soda. You can also turn into a discerning consumer and shop for liquors produced regionally or locally to further limit energy consumption while cheering the local economy.
Here are some ways in which you can toast to zero-waste-conscious drinking this holiday season:
Choose Sustainable Packaging
When you go shopping for rum, vodka and malts, choose distillers who follow a sustainable model for packaging their booze. Shop for drinks packaged in recyclable glass bottles or choose companies engaged in conservation processes or planting trees as part of corporate green initiatives. Simultaneously, go for biodegradable packaging if you are buying wines in cartons and search for products which use renewable energy and supporting innovations that can potentially lead to reduced carbon emissions in the production process.
Avoid Single-use Plastic
This one is rather obvious. When you host a large group of people, you can either serve drinks in biodegradable glasses or simply use glass or steel tumblers. Assorted glasses will add a rustic touch to the party and wooden tumblers or coconut shells filled with drinks would fit splendidly into a tiki party or island party theme. Do away with plastic straws, stirrers, jiggers and other barware to instead opt for wooden, steel shakers, openers and other apparatus.
Neat Spirits
Many distilleries across western Europe have been engaged in crafting models for creating premium whiskies that run on renewable energy or produce carbon-neutral gins to minimise footprint. Most of these experts suggest that having a dram of whisky produces a significantly lower CO2 emission than when it is blended with soda or a mixer. Essentially, 
consuming a spirit neat has as much to do with relishing its flavour as with reducing your carbon footprint.
Drink Local And Regional
When you are shopping for booze, try supporting local economies and go for draught or craft beers made in a brewery in your region to enjoy a frothy beer from a tap instead of a pint bottle. While opting for malt, you can also check out Godawan Artisanal Single Malt Whisky which celebrates the botanicals and grains produced in the dunes of Rajasthan.
Choose Sustainable Mixers
At cocktail night, when mixers must abound at your bar, choose only those bottles which are packaged and produced in thoughtful, conscious ways. Apply the same rules as you would while purchasing a bottle of booze. Sometimes, fruity concoctions or infusions can be made at home too, so instead of opting for canned juice, craft fruit juices or mixers in your kitchen using oranges, lemons, strawberries and coconuts.
Mindful Drinking
This is hardly a moral discourse but rather a basic hack to avoid waste. When you drink mindfully, you automatically pour only the amount you want to enjoy and finish your booze without letting it go to waste. This goes for every other beverage you savour, simply to avoid minimising excess.
