Our first tour of our second class began at the Miller/Coors Brewery in Fort Worth, Texas. Larry Johnson, Environmental & Sustainability Engineer, graciously welcomed us into the brewery early on a Saturday morning. He led us to a large meeting room on the right and gave us a a great deal of information regarding the sustainability efforts of the brewery and how they've become one of the leaders in the industry.
The Miller/Coors brewery is authorized to produce up to 9 million barrels a year (31 gallons in a barrel), it has 8 breweries nationwide 4 of which are 0 waste facilities, the Fort Worth brewery uses about 100 mega-joules of energy a year and is about 99.996 waste efficient (not a 100% because Texas doesn't allow burning of hazardous waste). The company has been practicing sustainability for about 10 years, but in 2011 it implemented an aggressive plan to reduce fuel, energy, and water usage by 6% and to discover more efficient ways to reduce waste. These new metrics for the company are built into every employees personal goals from the machine operators to the CEO and emails are sent out daily to track the company's progress.
Quick Beer Facts
- Water is used to make beer, clean & sanitize machinery, and cool the facilities.
- 86% of beer is water.
- The Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock because of beer. They planned to sail to a warm climate but ran out of beer on their journey.
- The oldest known recipe for beer was found on Babylonian clay tablets over 6000 years old.
- FDR was elected as U.S. President in 1932, in part because he promised to end Prohibition.
- The first consumer protection law ever written was enacted over beer by Duke Wilhelm IV. It was a purity law known as "Reinheitsgebot" - Pledge of Purity, limiting the ingredients to only water, malt, hops, and yeast (still the only ingredients of every beer in production today).
- Pennsylvania had more breweries in its history than any other state. In 1910 alone, 119 of the state's towns had at least one licensed beer maker.
- Around 1957 Coors launched an American recycling revolution by offering a penny for every can returned to the brewery, helping to to plant the seed of environmentalism in America.
That was interesting right? Here are some even more interesting facts about the Miller/Coors brewery. On the company's website you'll notice that they have 5 tenants of sustainability: Responsibility, Environmental Stewardship, Supply Chain, People & Community, and Ethics & Transparency. Each of these areas contribute to the company's overall mission of sustainability in their own way which Mr. Johnson explained to us during his presentation.
The company encourages responsible beer consumption and is currently working with many cities in the US to reduce underage drinking and drunk driving. They strive to market responsibly, to have 10 million drivers take advantage of their free cab ride program by 2015, reduce underage access, establish campus marketing guidelines and grants for responsible college students, expand employee training, and even established the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation.
The company works with landowners and cities (including the Trinity Water Project) to educate farmers on conserving water, how to use local grasses, and teach proper grazing techniques. In fact, the company's efforts garnered them a $5 million grant to expand the project and an invite to the Texas Legislature to discuss how other companies could follow their lead. They are currently working with the states of Idaho and Washington to produce barley more efficiently.
Miller/Coors works with its suppliers to implement and maintain sustainable business practices. Some of the barley growers they work with have been supplying the company for generations. In the first year of their Showcase Barley Farm they conserved over 120 million gallons of water. In 2011 Miller/Coors received the Colorado Motor Carriers Association and the Regional Air Quality Council's Green Shipper Award for fuel efficiency and emission reduction.
Miller/Coors works to give back through training, environmental assistance to community businesses, and groups like United Way. The company founded an Inclusion and Diversity Advisory Council made of outside leaders to advise the best strategies for advancement in diversity, inclusion, and multiculturalism. They have provided hundreds of thousands of hours to classroom and online training, volunteer their time for various non-profits, and provide tuition reimbursement to their employees.
The company keeps itself honest by working sustainability initiatives into every single person's performance metrics and by releasing annual sustainability reports. Their Audit Committee meets four times a year to oversee their efforts and twice annually they report their progress to parent companies via a Sustainability Assessment Matrix.
After his presentation, Mr. Johnson got everyone outfitted in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and started the tour of the facility. I have to say, as a beer lover, it was like heaven. The process itself is both simple and complex. The basics start with moisturizing the barley into a type of oatmeal, straining it out, activating live cultures, adding sugars (only if needed), and filtering. It's a really brilliant process if you think about it since basically the same 4 ingredients, manipulated in different ways and at different temperatures, create every single beer in existence.
Overall, this was a very unexpectedly amazing experience. Not only was it fun and intriguing, it was actually very educational. I was surprised by how much ability for sustainability naturally lies in the process of beer making (like feeding the leftover grains to cattle or using it as a fuel source). This is a visit that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. As an avid lover of the complexities of beer (and hopefully one day a certified brewer) I was blown away by the employee's dedication to sustainability and to their company that produces a product they love but also gives so much back to their community.
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