Lesson 2 - Environmental Sustainability
In this lesson we will discuss key ways to understand and improve the sustainability of brewery operations. This will include understanding the global context for sustainability, the key environmental sustainability impacts of producing beer and opportunities for improving the sustainability of beer and brewing operations.
Preface
Although beer has been brewed for over 5000 years, as modern brewers, we find ourselves now brewing it on a planet that is rapidly changing.
There are more people than ever before, with over seven billion people sharing the planet, and that number is expected to rise to over nine billion by 2050. All these people are competing for scarcer resources. Challenges like climate change, energy security, water scarcity, habitat and biodiversity loss, soil degradation, and plastic pollution are posing physical and existential threats both in the present and the future. Public and political opinion is waking up to these threats, and many brewers have been acting to protect the environment. There is still more to do, and new challenges will keep emerging.
This lesson explores the context of environmental sustainability within a brewery setting. We will discuss the UN Sustainable Development Goals, including a focus on climate change and the concept of the circular economy. This will help us understand both the environmental sustainability challenges and opportunities of the world we are operating in. We will look at the environmental impact of beer across its entire life cycle, and find areas to improve its sustainability. Finally, we will consider principles that we can adopt to work more sustainably. Our focus will be on how we can improve the environmental performance of our operations through the management of energy and carbon, water, solid waste, and co-products.
Figure: Enough said!