How these Vermont and New Hampshire craft beer retailers are taking sustainability into their own ‘cans’
PR (New Hampshire and Vermont), October, 2025
Reduce, reuse, recycle. It’s a phrase we’ve heard our whole lives. But it seems recycling is the only thing we remember. What about reduce and reuse? What opportunities do we have for that? Bringing your own bag to the store, returning glass milk bottles like Strafford Creamery (Strafford VT) and McNamara Milk (Plainfield NH) are a couple viable reuse options but this barely covers 1% of our consumption. For the other 99% of our shopping habits everything is single use or destined for recycling. With only 5-6% of U.S. plastic actually getting recycled annually, there must be a better way. Luckily for beer drinkers, there is a way.
You know those plastic can carriers (sometimes called handles or toppers) on 4 and 6-packs of craft beer? They are 100% reusable through a unique collaboration between several Vermont breweries, a handful of Grocery Stores, Reusable Solutions and sustainable logistics partner Bonte Bakery. Customers can bring the can carriers back to participating locations throughout the region. Do the right thing for the environment by bringing your can carriers to any of the locations below which are also listed on this map. Please share it widely.
Sustainable Grocery Stores taking back can carriers
- Montpelier VT-Hunger Mountain Co-op
- Morrisville VT-Morrisville Food Co-op
- Middlebury VT-Middlebury Natural Food Stores
- Lebanon NH-Co-op Food Stores Lebanon
- White River Junction VT- Co-op Food stores (pending as of oct 2 2025)
- Hanover, NH-Co-op Food Stores (pending as of oct 2 2025)
Sustainable Breweries that are reusing can carriers
- Black Flannel* – Essex Jct VT
- Switchback* – Burlington VT
- Red Clover* – Brandon VT
- Bent Hill Brewing – Braintree VT
- River Roost – White River Jct
*Takes back can carriers at their taprooms
What about recycling?
Unfortunately, due to the design of these can carriers, they are unlikely to be recycled in any type of curbside bin. For those of you interested in why, read below or check out this video.
Why can carriers / paktechs are generally not recyclable
When your recycling gets picked up, it might be by a company like Casella. Their motto is zero-sort recycling. While it’s zero-sort for you, it’s lots of sort for them. At the end of the day, recycling is a commodity for sale. They take all of the different types of recyclables from your bin and attempt to separate them at a facility called a MRF (Materials Recovery Facility) with the intention of baling and selling the material to reprocessors. Plastics, paper, and glass all have their own subcategories (for example, there are seven types of plastic variations that need to be separated). I explain that in detail here. MRFs need to sort every item into a sellable bale.
This is what typical bales of aluminum cans look like after sorting and processing.
Unfortunately, can carriers have a hard time being sorted correctly because they are uniquely shaped (flat, with holes) and often get mixed with paper, which contaminates paper bales.
Has this program had any success so far?
Yes! Here’s a brief slide on the history of the program.
So what do we do? REDUCE, Reuse, and then recycle, in that order. Let’s get more can carriers reused! So the next time you have a craft beer, think about the environment and bring the carriers back to one of the locations on the map. Stores that want to join the program as a collection location and breweries interested in buying rescued can carriers should contact Ben Kogan at Reusable Solutions by emailing ben@reusablesolutions.co (not .com) or calling/texting 305-495-9962.