Colorado’s New Belgium Brewing Company [1], based in Fort Collins, makes some of the country’s best microbrews – including Fat Tire, Blue Paddle, and Sunshine Wheat. But as important as the quality of the beer is the philosophy of the company, which is dedicated to energy efficiency and social responsibility. Founded by a social worker and an electrical engineer in 1991 – in a basement, with a home equity loan – New Belgium has been finding ways to reduce its CO2 emissions for nearly a decade. The brewery is powered by wind energy and uses sustainable technologies and Earth-friendly throughout its business. New Belgium’s media director Bryan Simpson told LIME about the company’s policies, and why he likes going to work every day.
LIME: Can you highlight a few of New Belgium's sustainability [1]
initiatives and explain the impetus behind them?
Bryan Simpson: New Belgium has always worked to minimize its environmental impact and maximize efficiencies. To that end we took an employee vote in 1998 (as we're an employee-owned company) and decided to commit to wind power even though the program would be financed by dipping into our bonus pool. It was a pretty moving moment for me personally - I thought, "These are my people."
Since then we've built our own process water treatment facility [2] that cleanses waters used in the brewing process before returning them to municipal [sources]. The system uses microbiology in a series of aerobic and anaerobic ponds that cleanse the water. A byproduct of the microbes consuming the organic [2] wastes is methane. In our system, we capture the methane and pipe it back into the building to power a co-generator [3] – an engine that produces both heat and electric. This supplies 15% of our total energy usage and saves about $3,000 a month on our utility bill.
We also have a 99% diversion rate so of all materials used - glass, cardboard, shrink wrap, etc. Only 1 per cent ends up in a landfill; the rest is recycled or reused. We run our delivery trucks on biodiesel [3] and yes – we do give one-year emloyees a cruiser bike to commute to work on.
LIME: How do these technologies and initiatives affect the New Belgium brand? And how do they impact daily life at the company? Do they make it a happier place to work?
Simpson: I think you would describe this as a happy place to come to work. It's good to know that how you make something is as important as what it is you make. There are many great new technologies out there as long as industry is willing to embrace change. I do hear from consumers that once they learn more about our sustainable business practices they feel a great deal more loyalty to the beer.
LIME: How do [sustainable practices] affect the company's bottom line? Do they make it more profitable? Or, if not, is it worth the trade-off?
Simpson: Short term, it often costs more, but it would be short-sighted not to consider the environmental and social costs of unchecked manufacturing. With the process water plant, the energy bill savings due to methane harvesting have allowed us to pay down that project in three years versus a projected five. It's definitely worth the tradeoff.
LIME: Since you first began implementing your green business strategies, have you seen an increase in other companies going the same route?
Simpson: I can offer two examples of companies who cite our example as leading to their conversion to wind power–Brooklyn Brewery [4] in New York and Uinta [5] in Utah. That feels good. I think more and more companies are looking to shed traditional sources of energy for new, more elegant solutions - at least forward-thinking enterprises are.
LIME: What's next for you on the sustainability front?
Simpson: Well, we just joined the Chicago Climate Exchange [6]'s CO2 offset credit program–that's a program where companies agree to a reduction in their greenhouse gas emission and buy credits if they don't meet the standard. Conversely, you can sell credits if you surpass your goal. It's an interesting program and one way of going carbon neutral even though you still have to burn some fossil fuels or output CO2 from time to time–at least for the moment.