MillerCoors, the US joint venture of SABMiller, one of the world’s leading brewers, has tapped into a new use for brewery waste water. The Ohio brewery of MillerCoors brewery teamed up with a company which produces animal feeds from renewable sources to run a full scale trial of an innovative technology which creates a fish food ingredient from the brewery’s waste water.
The new product can be used in place of the food sources currently employed by fish farms, thereby helping to alleviate the country’s dependence upon stressed natural fish stocks whilst also adding to the ways in which brewery waste can be reused and recycled.
The trials have proved extremely promising, paving the way for further exploration of how the technology can be implemented.
MillerCoors CEO, Leo Kiely said: “We aim to ensure that we utilise our waste resources to the greatest extent possible. Technology and innovative partnerships have a crucial role to play as we work towards becoming a zero-waste operation; advances such as this new development show that there innumerable ways in which our waste can be made useful for others.”
Besides this, MillerCoors on Tuesday released its 2010 Sustainable Development report, titled “Great Beer, Great Responsibility,” which details progress across the company’s corporate social responsibility commitments. The brewer succeeded in exceeding its 2015 goal for waste reduction, by eliminating 20% of the amount of waste sent to landfill, MillerCoors said. In total, the company reuses or recycles nearly 100% of all brewery waste and achieved zero waste to landfill at two of its breweries.
“Surpassing our 2015 waste reduction goal five years early is a phenomenal success that demonstrates the commitment and passion of MillerCoors people across all of our brewery operations,” said MillerCoors Chief Responsibility and Ethics Officer, Cornell Boggs. “We recognize that sustainable development requires a sustained commitment and we’re working to further improve our performance for generations to come. Great Beer, Great Responsibility defines our commitment to creating America’s Best Beer Company by growing our business the right way.”
MillerCoors 2010 Sustainable Development Report includes an assessment of the company’s performance in 2009, specifically in regards to company goals across its five key responsibilities: Alcohol Responsibility, Environmental Sustainability, Sustainable Supply Chain, People and Communities, and Ethics and Transparency. Woven throughout the report is the company’s belief that the privilege of producing “great beer“ comes with “great responsibility“ – to its people, partners, communities and the environment.
In 2009, MillerCoors also:
- Reduced waste to landfill by 20 percent and achieved zero waste at its Trenton, Ohio and Elkton, Virginia breweries.
- Expanded the Miller Lite Free Rides program, which has provided 2.3 million riders with safe alternative transportation on key holidays, to four new markets.
- Reduced total energy consumption by 3.6 percent, lowered greenhouse gas emissions by 1.2 percent and renewed its commitment to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Leaders program, pledging to reduce corporate-wide greenhouse gas emissions eight percent by 2015.
- Recorded a world-class ratio of 3.40 barrels of water for every barrel of beer at its Ft. Worth, Texas brewery.
- Completed the largest installation of membrane bioreactor technology in the U.S.at its Elkton, Va. brewery.
- Began engineering at its Elkton, Va. brewery to reuse biogas from its anaerobic wastewater treatment system for generating electrical power, which the company currently does at two of its four anaerobic wastewater treatment systems.
- Reduced packaging materials an estimated 11 million pounds in Coors Light and Coors Banquet secondary packaging.
- Held its first annual Water Stewardship Month, which resulted in nearly 1,700 hours of volunteer time from employees toward watershed protection and improvement activities.
- Allocated 7.4 percent of its total 2009 spend to diverse suppliers.
MillerCoors also engaged an external assuror, Corporate Citizenship, to review the report. Corporate Citizenship conducted interviews with employees and provided a commentary within the report. According to Corporate Citizenship, “MillerCoors has moved forward significantly in advancing its own sustainable development activities in the past year.”
