To the Editor:
As an alum who'd love to see the return of the keg to campus, I feel compelled to defend these friendly 15.5 gallon containers of liquid goodness from Jeremy Mak's wild diatribe ("UCS keg stand unfounded," March 8). If I had more time, I'd address all of the ways in which his column is wrong, but I'll stick to this one point: Kegs are undeniably better for the environment than cans.
The reason? Aluminum takes a massive amount of energy to extract from the ground, purify and convert into a usable form. If you crunch the numbers, you'll find that the 12-oz. aluminum can is quite possibly the most resource-intensive beverage container ever created by mankind.
In contrast, plastic cups require much less energy to produce. Although plastics production does involve the use of some non-renewable resources, it is far less energy-intensive than aluminum.
Why is this important? The factories that produce beer cans and party cups are powered by electricity. Electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. And the more fossil fuels we burn, the more we accelerate global warming.
The consequence? Every time you drink from a can instead of a cup, you make the polar ice caps melt just a little bit faster, and the Ocean State moves one step closer to being swallowed by the Atlantic Ocean. So, please, think of the children, and drink your beer from kegs.
Carl Takei '02March 8
