Greening Vancouver: Save The Beers!

By Maggie Koerth-Baker April 17, 2010

Treehugger's Chris Tackett brings this sad story of corporate waste and legal sillyness to our attention.

Two employees of the Columbia, Missouri Solid Waste Division and beer rescuing heroes, Beer Heroes or Beeroes, if you will, have made headlines for rescuing some 50-odd cases of beer from being needlessly destroyed at the landfill, at which they work. ... And it was a victory, one to be celebrated with say a couple truck loads of free beer, even, that is until word got back to the fun haters in the main office who are going by the book on this one and calling the beer salvaging rescue effort, which some are now calling Operation Safe Suds, a theft and possibly a matter for the police. See, because anything left at the landfill officially becomes city property, these city employees were technically stealing this beer.

America, we cannot allow this injustice to stand! If there's one thing that can bring America together it is a love of beer. We've got problems when we criminalize attempts to reduce waste...even more so when we're talking about rescuing beer! It's time we do something about it! I hereby am launching the Save the Beers Campaign. This is an effort to bring attention to Beer-related waste. Share this story with your friends, family and elected representatives. Post our "Save the Beers!" image on your blog, Facebook profile or any spare billboards you have access to as a sign of solidarity. And don't waste ANY beer yourself. One drop wasted is one drop too many!

Beers, they're kind of like whales if you think about it real hard.

Extra: Included in this story is possibly the greatest understatement ever written in an American newspaper.

When explaining the motives behind why one would want to take some free beer, the evil man responsible for dumping the beer, Joe Priesmeyer said, "Beer is a popular product."

Treehugger: Save the Beers!, includes helpful list of 8 ways to use beer instead of throwing it out
Columbia Tribune: Discarded Beer Causes Stir

Please Click Over to Boing Boing to see These and Other Fabulously Intelligent and Eco Comments:

Obviously, the salvagers need to:

a) recover each bottle for recycling at the city waste department, thus returning the containers to the city in an environmentally-responsible manner;

and

b) return to the dump to empty their bladders after drinking the beer, thus returning the contents to the city in an environmentally-responsible manner.

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