Submitted by: Submitted by applex14
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Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 10/29/2015 09:29 AM
New Belgium Brewing: Ethical and Environmental Responsibility
What environmental issues does the New Belgium Brewing Company work to address? How has New Belgium taken a strategic approach to addressing these issues? Why do you think the company has taken such a strong stance toward sustainability?
Some environmental issues that New Belgium works to address are: conserving energy, recycling, water conservation, and reducing pollution. In order to address some of these environmental issues the company has come up with different strategic approaches.
In order to conserve energy they installed a smart grid that alerts them to non-essential operational functions, so they can turn them off and save power. The company is also the first wind-powered brewery in the United States, because they invested in a wind turbine to save energy. Another way they conserve energy is by using a brew kettle which heats up wort sheets instead of the whole kettle at once.
Recycling is also a big part of the company's beliefs and core values. The company diverts 94 percent of waste away from landfills by recycling as many supplies as possible. They also store their spent barley and grains, and invite local farmers to pick them up and feed it to their pigs. Another way they recycle is by taking bacteria out of waste water and converting it into harvestable high-protein fish food.
The company also takes part in water conservation, which they particpiate in by having a steam condenser that captures and reuses hot water that boils the barley and hops in the production process to start the next brew. Also the company only uses 4.2 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of beer, and they are trying to find ways to reduce that amount of water by 10 percent.
The final environmental issues that they address is pollution. In order for them to reduce water pollution, they extract methane from water waste to reduce the strain on local municipal water treatment facility....