Salute the Flag, Save the Keg

After you've swept up the watermelon seeds from the back deck, dumped the ashes from the BBQ, and tossed the Chinet plates into the garbage this evening, here's something else you might consider doing: Lock down that empty keg.

Rest assured, your local bar owner will be doing the same thing with his empty kegs in the pub's back alley.

With the price of some metals up nearly 100 percent in the past year, empty kegs have become a hot commodity for scrap metal sales, and it's becoming a problem for brewers.

More kegs are going unreturned, and it's costing the industry as much as $50 million per year. Molson Coors Brewing says it lost twice as many kegs in 2006 as it did in 2005. It costs brewers about $150 to replace a missing barrel.

Some kegs wind up in the hands of thieves that stake out back alleyways of bars and restaurants where proprietors store the empty barrels before returning them. Other crooks, probably more likely of the financially strapped, fraternity-dwelling ilk, buy the kegs, drink the beer, and then sell the kegs to scrap metal buyers for more than the deposit.

An empty keg can fetch as much as $55 or more from some scrap metal yards. Factor that against a typical $20 deposit and you've got yourself a profitable scam in progress.

The problem has become so widespread that the beer industry is taking matters into its own hands. It's reaching out to the scrap metal recycling industry to remind buyers that they can't accept empty kegs unless they are being sold by the breweries that own them.

The Beer Institute, which represents the industry, is pushing for legislation that requires metal buyers to ask for proof of ownership from keg sellers.

Reports of the problem have surfaced in the pages of local newspapers in recent weeks in Akron, Milwaukee, and Orlando.

The price of metals has soared as demand has increased from developing countries such as China and India. Thefts of copper wiring, manhole covers, and air conditioning units have also been on the rise.

by Megan Barnett

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