Sustainability And Beer / Sustainable Brewing

Join Marverine Cole, award winning BBC journalist, broadcaster and beer sommelier, as she discusses some of the biggest trends across the brewing sector with panellists from around Europe. From sustainability and the “green recovery” from Covid-19, to innovation in flavours and manufacturing, and the changing shape of the modern-day beer drinker.

This panel will also launch the new “Raising the Bar” series, produced by BBC StoryWorks Commercial Productions, which will be taking a look at the brewing sector across Europe over the next 12 months.

There’s no beer without packaging. Containers are essential for brewers to provide safe and fresh delivery of beers to their consumers. Cans, bottles, kegs. Whatever your beer comes in, almost completely it can be returned, re-used and recycled.  The brewing sector has led the way for many years, continues to make advancements and is often seen as the reference for other sectors looking to improve. In this session we’ll cover:

• Unpicking and optimising the full beer packaging supply chain
• The packaging lifecycle
• Beer packaging solutions, the place for innovation and why this matters
• EU-wide policy changes to waste management systems to improve waste-as-resource markets and boost recycling rates

As the EU works towards legislation on Green claims and declarations, the beer sector has multiple fascinating case studies of brewers and others within the beer value chain fully integrating sustainability into their businesses, pursuing improvements at every step of the way.

This session will feature a presentation of a first-of-its-kind online tool to measure impacts at every step of the life cycle, allowing brewers to benchmark against others and identify the actions that can reap the most benefits in terms of environmental impact. The Beer PEFCR (Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules) was developed as a pilot with the European Commission.

The session will also include some of the best practises across the industry, including a case study from the EC-funded LIFE brewery project – another highly-replicable integrated solution to recover brewery secondary materials for aquaculture-feed ingredients.

Packaging can be a differentiation point for small and medium-sized brewers, if used correctly. How can suppliers serve small brewers and their smaller production volumes/batches? Cans are increasingly considered by small brewers as a viable option for packaging freshly brewed beer. The taste properties of canned beer has improved and consumers’ perception is changing. Despite some question marks over how sustainable cans are compared to other methods, this option is being embraced by brewers.

Sustainability is key and becoming even more important for the success of your business. This session focusses on three aspects of sustainability directly affecting your brewery: legislation, operation and communication.

Drahomira Mandikova from Asahi explains how the EU is shaping policy through the Green Deal and how it is impacting the brewing sector. Jan Paul Rutten will showcase the motivation behind Gulpener Brewery’s mission to build the greenest brewhouse in Europe and what benefits that has brought to this family brewery. And as the saying goes: ‘be good and tell it’, Mandi MacKay explains how Sierra Nevada communicates its achievements to a wider audience.