Going green with Saint Patrick’s Day iconography

Matcha Kyoto IPA

🍺 BEER: Did you know that beer can be greenified? Green ingredients such as matcha and spirulina have hit the international market. Spirulina, a blue-green algae superfood packed with protein, copper, and B vitamins, in particular is growing in popularity among international brewers. RedDot Brewhouse, located next to the Singapore Botanical Gardens, offers a spirulina-infused lager.

Spirulina beer

Japan’s Okhotsk Brewery created the highly popular Okhotsk Blye Ryuhyo Draft with unique local ingredients including spirulina.

🍻 SLÁINTE!  Like so many people across the world, the Irish say “Health” to toast to one another’s well-being. Try this nutrient-packed six-seed soda bread to moderate your libations.

🍀 SHAMROCK:  Four-leaf clovers are believed to occur every one in one thousand. For a shot at finding one of these rare shoots, consider cultivating a clover lawn. Decimated by the herbicide revolution in the mid-twentieth century, clover lawns are making a comeback as a sustainable alternative or addition to turfgrass. They are heat and drought-tolerant, able to thrive in partial shade, and attractive to pollinators.

🎩 LEPRECHAUN:  Leprechauns are often depicted as cobblers. Ireland’s shoe-making traditions are increasingly innovative; Sampla is a sustainable Irish footwear brand pioneering designs made with vegan leather formed from apple waste.

Sampla vegan shoes. Do they come in green?

🌈 RAINBOW:  Check out these rainbow-wrapped pencils that are wood and plastic-free, using recycled paper instead. Eco-conscious retailer Friendsheep makes multicolor pom pom coasters out of natural wool.

🪙 GOLD:  E-waste is glittering on the economic horizon after Cornell University researchers developed a non-toxic method for extracting 99.9 percent of gold from recycled electronic waste. As an added bonus, the process catalyzes carboxylation, or converts carbon dioxide into organic compounds.

Author: Kelly Milone

Kelly Milone holds an MA in cultural heritage management (Johns Hopkins University), BA in anthropology, BFA in dance and Arabic minor (Montclair State University). She is a dance teacher and choreographer, quick-study interior designer, and aspiring creative and travel writer.