There's nothing quite like blowing the froth off a freshly poured schooner. There's also nothing more frustrating than the notoriously difficult to recycle plastic beer rings and bottle lids that come along with buying a six-pack from the bottle shop.

Heineken is ticking all our boxes with a new in-store refilling station that allows customers to fill the same bottles with fresh draught beer again and again.

The new system provides customers with glass bottles that can be reused. It also incentivises customers to return these bottles to the store if and when they choose to stop refilling them. Plus, it reduces the carbon footprint of the beer they are buying by sourcing the product form local producers in order to minimise transport emissions.

“Heineken has been building the quality & image of draught beers for decades, while simultaneously ensuring we become more green and rethinking how we can innovate to make a positive step towards waste reduction,” said Heineken’s global innovation manager for home draughts Chadi Abdo.

“By developing this innovation, we aim to offer our customers a new way to enjoy a perfectly fresh draught beer, at home, delivered in a sustainable way in-store.”

Heineken is currently trailing the new smart dispenser technology at a bottle shop in Paris with plans to expand the project to three more countries soon. If anyone from Heineken is reading this, can you pop Australia on that list?

While some pubs around the country do offer refilling services, and craft beer companies have installed dispensers at some venues and bottle shops, the concept of refillable beer has not yet been implemented at scale.

Heineken's program offers a promising example of how reuse might be taken up in the beverage industry in order to minimise waste and improve customer satisfaction. We'll cheers to that!

Positive Environment News has been compiled using publicly available information. Planet Ark does not take responsibility for the accuracy of the original information and encourages readers to check the references before using this information for their own purposes.