New Belgium Brewing Co's Got a Head on a Sustainable Product
by John Laumer, Philadelphia 
on 06. 9.05
Finally a beer that makes gas in the good way only. The Denver Post has a nice June 1 profile of the Fort Collins CO, New Belgium Brewing Co style and products. Sounds sustainably delicious, with far fewer planetary burps on the side. According to the Post, "...employees with titles such as "vibe writer" and "sustainability goddess" are encouraged to ride bicycles to work". Such a shame to see beer drinking Hippies making more money than the competitors by cutting energy consumption. Makes a brewski loving TreeHugger wonder what else goes down with a New Belgium tapper? See below the fold for some one-liners. Mmmm.
"With concepts as simple as skylights and shady eaves to as advanced as electricity generation from brewing waste, New Belgium uses 40 percent less energy than the average American brewer..".
"In 1999, New Belgium became the first U.S. brewery and one of the first Colorado businesses to buy all its electricity from wind power. That's one of the company's few energy initiatives that fail to provide an economic return...".
"Among the most ambitious is a $5 million system that collects methane from brewing wastewater and uses it to fire a 290- kilowatt electric generator...[that]supplies up to 60 percent of the brewery's power".
"...the system's biggest savings came from avoiding the steep fees that would be assessed by the city of Fort Collins to treat the brewery's nutrient- rich wastewater. With the combination of self-generated power and reduced wastewater fees, the methane-collection system paid itself off in three years".
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So nice to see another Natural Capital-style approach to business. These people have balance down to a science.
Hello? Green makes $$Green, not just hippies happy. It's economically sound in the long run, because it's more efficient.
Regrettably, I did not make the ironic statement come across funny, as intended. When writing the hippy quip I was thinking about how a certain mega-brewer in roughly the same geographic area recently announced a project to do the waste-ethanol to electricity trick. Small organizations innovate, big ones copy. No surprise; but the culture of balance is far harder to clone than technology is. Once the easy pieces fall into place, sustainability gets interesting.