What’s Their Mission?

They want to become the world’s first carbon negative international beer business by taking twice as much carbon out of the air as they create.  In doing this they aspire to be the world’s most sustainable drink brand and want to encouraging others to follow in their footsteps and make the changes the world so desperately needs.  They have got a 24 month plan for their Ellon Brewery to become carbon neutral and want to be a zero waste business in this time frame too.

James Watt, co-founder of BrewDog commented,

“Our Carbon. Our Problem. So, we are going to fix it ourselves. Huge change is needed right now, and we want to be a catalyst for that change in our industry and beyond. We fully acknowledge that we are a long way from perfect. However, we are determined to rapidly and fundamentally change everything as we work hard to ensure we have a positive impact on the planet.”

Read their full sustainability report here.

What have they done so far?

To date BrewDog have done a variety of things to help with their impact on the environment:

• Removed plastic from their supply chain where possible.
• Protested Donald Trump’s decision in America of pulling out of the Paris Agreement on climate change.  They even dedicated a beer to it with all sale proceeds of the product donated to the climate-awareness charity 10:10.
• Created wind farms for green energy, which powers their UK bars.
• Up-cycled their waste streams by using spent grain to create green gas, or feed cattle and using spent hops as fertilisers.
• Working with partner companies on electric vehicles, and hope to have a fleet of electric delivery trucks coming soon.
• Working with experts in the sustainability field, Professor Mike Berners Lee, to research more sustainable packaging solutions and to eliminate plastic further from their supply chain.
• Keeping their brewing local to reduce the distance between the brewery and customer.

What Are They Planning On Doing In The Future?

BrewDog’s plans are widespread across the world.  With Brewery’s as far as Germany, America and Australia they are creating different projects across the world.  Not only are these having a positive environmental impact, but they are also creating hundreds of new jobs.

They intend to buy 2050 acres of Scottish Highlands in order to plant more than 1 million trees and create a 1500-acre native woodland and 550 acres of peatlands.  Within this they plan to build a sustainable campsite that can be used as a base for education programs to help spread their message about climate change and even to invite people to help plant trees with them!

Within their Ellon Brewery they have planning permission to build an onsite anaerobic digester.  This has a number of purposes; to turn wastewater into clean water, produce an organic fertiliser and a CO² recovery system.  This system will ensure that instead of the CO² escaping into the atmosphere it can be used to carbonate beer later on in the process.

We’re proud to be partnered with a brand that cares about their environmental impact on the world and wants to make a positive change.  We look forward to watching their progress over the next 24 months, and to see what beers they have in store for our honesty bars this Winter!