'What the Hell Is That?': Brewery Uses Algae to Reduce Carbon Emissions

by Matt Bungard (Sydney Morning Herald) One of Sydney's most popular beermakers is using algae to make its products entirely carbon neutral, and encourage other breweries to do the same. Young Henrys has installed a 400-litre 'bioreactor' of algae at its brewery in Newtown to offset carbon emissions from its beer production. It also plans to use the algae to produce food, pharmaceuticals and bio-plastic, with some help from the University of Technology Sydney's Deep Green Biotech Hub.

They have now developed their own algae in-house, saying the conditions inside the brewery were favourable to cultivation.

The end goal, he said, was to help create something that would not just have an impact for them, but could be adapted in businesses around the country and the world.

"It could be something that people put on the outside of buildings to treat wastewater - the actual applications of this are quite fascinating."

"From a Young Henrys point of view, we'd like to get to the point where we can put a C0₂ catchment system internally and basically it would be a closed-loop within the brewery."

"We've still got a fair way to go but once we've got in bolted down and have a real-world application, we definitely want other breweries to run with it," he said. READ MORE