New Belgium Sustainability Benefits

Water
New Belgium Brewery has placed water conservation in their strategies to implement the goal to
reduce water. The main ingredient in beer is water, 89% of water is used in the process of making
beer. Figure 1 below shows how much water it takes to make one beer.

By installing water sub-meters throughout the facility so that they can identify and address any
wasting water in the production process. With this implementation in place, New Belgium
Brewery will reach their goal to reduce water use per barrel to 3.5:1 by 2015 (New Belgium,
2014).
Cons

Hoppy beers, by nature, can require a bit more water to brew than non-hoppy beers.
It takes a lot of water & energy to extract all of the wonderful aromas & bitterness
characteristics from Hops.
Dry hopping uses more water for the movement of beer and tank cleaning.
Cost of Water usage.

Waste
Waste reduction should be part of every company strategy and self-individuals routine of life. In
2013, New Belgium Brewery diverted 99.9% of their waste from the landfill. The Creation of the

waste reduction and diversion has helped form realistic waste goals for the company. The
benefits that New Belgium created for waste reduction was:

Elimination of two trash dumpsters at both our process water treatment plant and malt
building. Replaced with recycling containers.
The following items were new materials added to our recycling program:
o Plastic bags
o Super sacks
o Mylar bags
o Compact discs
o Compost (at our off-site warehouse)
o Additionally, systems were improved to collect more Styrofoam and paper
packaging from operations than in previous years.
o Purchased new stretch wrap and aluminum can balers that assisted in optimizing
the collection of these waste streams (New Belgium, 2013).

Cons
New Belgium Brewing uses its waste diversion rate as the primary performance indicator to
guide recycling/diversion efforts. A high diversion rate is seen as an indicator of success, while a
low diversion rate assumes an inefficient recycling program. Since these guidelines are in place it
creates problems that overlook opportunities for reducing overall waste.

In 2011, New Belgium created less waste but made more products in the last year
Recycling leftover POS (point of sale) materials from expired promotions, damaged
product or cleanup projects.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

At the moment greenhouse gases has reached its all-time high and still is escalating higher every
day. New Belgium has acted quickly with its greenhouse gas emission strategy, that has benefited
the community of the world by reducing CO2e per hectoliter of beer sold by 25% by 2015
(New Belgium, 2006). How does New Belgium benefit from reducing greenhouse gas, according
to New Belgium (GHG) emission intensity:
Scope 1: Decreasing Direct Emissions
Scope 2: Decrease Indirect Emissions
Scope 3: Decrease Partial Indirect Emissions
Cons
Even though the greenhouse gas emissions strategy are in place, there are still problems that are
affected the company with this strategy. Here are some areas that New Belgium is running into
with their strategy:

On-Campus stationary combustion of fossil fuels

Mobile combustion of fossil fuels by NBB Owned/controlled vehicles
Fugitive Emissions
Indirect emissions generated in the production of electricity they use

Reference:
New Belgium Brewing Company, 2006-2014. Sustainability. Retrieved from
http://www.newbelgium.com/Sustainability.aspx
Siegel, RP. 2010. How Much Water Did It Take to Make That Pint of Beer? Retrieved from
http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/09/how-much-water-did-it-take-to-make-that-pint-of-beer/