While examples of individual acts of sustainability are peppered throughout the CocktailGreen website, we wanted to highlight some examples of bars that are/have made systemic efforts at sustainability.
White Lyan, London
This cocktail bar was not only one of the first to take on sustainability in a big way, it still serves as an example of the most radical thinking on sustainability. The bar served cocktails from pre-prepared, pre-chilled and diluted bottles. There were no garnishes and no ice, and not even bottle waste as they distilled alcohol in-house.
The Perennial, San Francisco
At this restaurant, food waste was reduced with a complex system of insects and aquaponics, and that's just the beginning. The cocktail program had a special emphasis on saving water - there was no cubed ice machine, all "stirred" drinks were pre-batched, and "shaken" cocktails to be served up were done in blenders so that no ice was leftover in the shaker nor the glass.
- Nothing Shaken, Nothing Stirred: The Perennial's Strained Relationship with Ice
- How The Perennial Restaurant Was Built, Environment First
- San Francisco's Climate Restaurant: Test Lab and Social Experiment Too
Gamsei, Munich
This hyperlocal bar combined traditional preservation techniques with high-tech ones to make the bounty of the seasons last year-round. "The bartenders forage in the forests and buy stuff at farmers' markets in season and use them fresh or preserve them using old-world techniques like fermentation, syrup-making, kombuchas, drying, etc. as well as new-world techniques like running infusions through the Rotavap so that they never spoil and flash-freezing other ingredients with liquid nitrogen."