Name: Consumers want eco-friendly beer
Uploaded: 2021-06-22
Duration: 7 min 18 s
Description: New Belgium Brewing's CEO says his company can't afford to ignore climate change.

New Belgium Brewing's CEO says his company can't afford to ignore climate change.

Consumers want eco-friendly beer

Features

Consumers have a lot of choices when it comes to beer. There's 8000 craft breweries ever take in the United States today and it's a category consumers really like to engage in consumers, relish that opportunity to research the breweries and understand who they're spending their money with. We have an obligation to the communities that were part of and yes to our shareholders as well, to address climate in a rapid, meaningful way. Because the longevity of our businesses depend on it as well as our co workers and employees here depend on us having a business as well. Yeah, yeah, we care a lot about the community or surrounding areas and making sure that they prosper in the future. And I think because breweries are so essential to communities, they really focus on those types of things. We make an agricultural product, so having access to clean water, having access to great hops, great barley. This is critical to us making a great product and consumers see the impact of climate change in their everyday lives and they are willing to support companies and brands that are taking real authentic, serious action to help reduce the problems and address climate change. The three main ingredients that go into beer waters wide, but barley and hops, the two main ingredients in beer has something in common and that is. Those two ingredients are almost exclusively used only for beer. Hops are very centralized in their production area and very centralized in the number of hot growers. There are barley is completely the other way and that is that there are thousands of growers that sell to malting companies. Fire and drought are two of the biggest risks to us from climate change. We need fresh crops every year to be able to continue to brew beer. You start out buying grain and £55 bags and then you graduate to £2000 bags and then now you know where we are, where a railcar picks up the grain, it drops, it probably three miles from here and a truck takes it dumped in our silo. I think our silos hold £50,000 of grain. So as you get bigger, you're able to leverage more and more things, you sort of move further and further to doing it more efficiently and more sustainably. We've done things like giving our spent grain farmers were now testing out uh nitrogen instead of CO two and some of our process, we're doing things like solar panels, like all those things, but the list will just keep going on and on and on. But it's really fun stuff because there's always new innovations that are kind of working their way down from the big guys to the small guys like us where they actually become accessible. New Belgium's goal is to be carbon neutral by 2030 and we recently had fat tire become the first certified carbon neutral here in the United States. New Belgium was the first wind powered brewery back in 1998. They have a huge solar array here at our brewery in Fort Collins, but we're continuing to invest in on tight renewables as well. Many of our emissions are tied to systemic issues. They're tied to the electric grid, they're tied to farming practices, They are tied to transportation issues. And so new Belgium is not in a position to solve any of those on its own. And so we use advocacy as a way to help rally other brewers, but frankly other businesses because we can't solve them. As I said individually, we, we actually need to collective and we need government policy and government regulations to really help us get after solving some of these bigger drivers of our own greenhouse gas emissions. We work with all of our vendors from the very, very beginning part of our RFP processes, a questionnaire that asked them questions about how they're being sustainable, what their goals are, what they plan to do in the next 5, 10 years to make sure there is sustainable company. And sometimes we do things on our own, even if our vendors are not perfect, we spend time with the Department of Energy, Os you Oregon State University and our local community college to come here and audit what we do and also audit how we worked with our vendors to find how we can optimize. I think the impetus for change is coming from consumers. I think it's coming from companies, I think it's also coming from shareholders and investors. We need to be thinking about true long term sustainability of our businesses and our organizations, which means it has to be top of mind with the Internet, with social media with sort of transparency over the last especially 20-30 years, consumers now can actually understand the positive and negative externalities. I think that is one of the greatest things that we have now is transparency of what actually is happening behind the scenes for a product to eventually get produced. Now we have this remarkable vehicle of the Internet and social media and low cost ways that small producers can say, here's my product, here's why it's different, here's what I care about and here's why you should buy it. There's a belief that medium sized businesses, small businesses as well can't afford regulation or policy around climate. The voice I bring that is we're actually the businesses who can't afford climate change. Were the people who are going to pay more for raw ingredients or will be cut off entirely from certain ingredients relative to bigger players who are out there. And so without addressing this, the economy is going to have fewer successful small businesses than it does today. That is the greatest part about being a small business in this time in this age is that we have the ability to shine a light, We have the ability to tell our story. We have the ability to show consumers, hey, why are you going to buy uh my product that might be a little bit more expensive, but here's what I'm doing both in my company, for my employees, for my community and for the environment. And you can make the choice if you want to support this. And thankfully, consumers are choosing to support the people and the companies and the brands that they believe in. And that's uh pretty special time, I think to be running a small business in America. Yeah.