You may have had a few bottles of beer over the weekend but have you ever thought about its environmental impact?

Well, a Suffolk-based brewery claims to be the first in the UK to have measured the carbon equivalent emissions for the whole lifecycle of its bottled beers.

It covers everything from the growth of the cereal to brewing and packing through to the distribution, retail, usage and disposal of the bottle.

Adnams calculated ten of its different bottled beers and found the Southwold Bitter is the “greenest”, with a carbon footprint of 529g/CO2e while Spindrift, a blue bottle, has a footprint of 711g/CO2e – the highest in its range.

It suggests the dominant carbon-emitting process comes from manufacturing the bottle, given the intense energy requirements to make glass. The brewery aims to cut the carbon footprint of Spindrift by moving it from the blue bottle to an amber one like the rest.

Richard Carter, Adnams Retail Management Accountant said: “Whilst it’s reassuring to know how ‘green’ our beer is, the results of this assessment will help us to improve even further. We have already begun doing this – the results made it was clear that the blue glass of Spindrift was having a higher impact on the environment than we would like so we switched it to brown glass – brown is greener than blue!”