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Innovation and Environmental Impact - Can new innovations reduce beer’s water usage?

Geoff Riley

9th February 2022

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This clip is gold dust for students revising negative and positive externalities from production!

The FT visits breweries in the Netherlands to discover how they are attempting to reduce the environmental footprint of their manufacturing processes including tackling the important issue of water scarcity.

One litre of beer often involves using up many more litres of water.

But research and innovation throughout the production process is helping to lower the external cost of production.

There is a terrific example of a positive production externality in this video - see if you can find it!

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Geoff Riley

Geoff Riley FRSA has been teaching Economics for nearly forty years. He has over twenty years experience as Head of Economics at leading schools. He writes extensively and is a contributor and presenter on CPD and Revision conferences in the UK and overseas.