But Hall & Woodhouse brewery found a more sustainable solution for what do with the unsold beer.
Thanks to the brewery’s green energy focus, the returned products helped create enough electricity to power nearly 17,000 average homes for a day - or around 46 homes for one whole year.
Hall & Woodhouse head brewer Toby Heasman said: Although lockdown meant that many of our pubs had to return unsold beer back to the brewery, the silver lining has been that none of this has gone to waste. Thanks to our wastewater treatment plant, all of the returned beer has been used to generate green electricity.