Lesson 3 - Environmental Sustainability SAQ

*** Utilising the concepts of the ‘circular economy’ how could you design a more sustainable beer value chain?

Response:

The circular economy concept aims to move local, national, and global economies from the current take-make-waste extractive model, to a circular model where resources stay in the system, wastes are designed out, and economic activity is decoupled from the consumption of finite resources.

The circular economy is based on three principles:

1)    Design out waste and pollution

A circular economy finds and designs out the negative impacts of activities that cause damage to human health and natural systems. This includes the release of greenhouse gases (GHGs), hazardous substances and pollution of air, land, and water.

2)    Keep products and materials in use

A circular economy favours activities that preserve the value of elements within that economic system. This value can be in the form of materials, energy and/or labour. In practice, this means designing products for durability, reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling to keep products, components, and materials circulating in the economy. Circular systems make use of bio-based materials by encouraging many different uses of them within the economy before they cycle back to natural systems.

3)    Regenerate natural systems

A circular economy avoids the use of non-renewable resources and preserves or enhances renewable ones, e.g. by preserving soil health and fertility by supporting natural system regeneration to return nutrients to the soil, or by using renewable energy as opposed to finite fossil fuels sources.

Application of the principles can be thought of across two types of material: technical (or finite) and biological, which have distinctly different flows through the circular economy.

As the brewing supply chain utilises a combination of material types, understanding how to manage the flow of technical and biological materials helps us to think about how to design a more sustainable supply chain.

1)    Technical:

Technical (or finite) materials include metals, plastics and synthetic chemicals. They have a finite availability and must continuously cycle through the system, being captured and recaptured to ensure their value and utility is not lost. Examples utilised in the brewing supply chain include materials such as metal, glass and plastic for packaging, materials used for equipment, manufactured chemicals and some refrigerants.

• In order of most preferred, management principles for technical materials include:

  • Maintaining and prolonging use

  • Reuse and redistributing

  • Refurbishment and remanufacture

  • Recycling

2)    Biological:

Biological materials include those materials that can safely re-enter the natural world once they have gone through one or more use cycles within the economy, where they will biodegrade over time returning the embedded nutrients to the natural environment. Examples utilised in the brewing supply chain include agricultural materials (barley and hops), water, yeast, and bio-based packaging materials such as cardboard.

• Management of biological resources can be thought of in cascades, which are essentially loops in the biological cycle. Cascades refer to the process of putting biological materials to different uses as they move through the economy and extract the stored energy in the materials. Along the cascade, the material degrades until ultimately it needs to be returned to the natural environment as nutrients, feeding a new cycle.

Some common practices in brewing already fit well in the circular economy concept. For example, feeding spent grains to cattle can be framed as a loop in a biological cascade. However, circular economy concepts can be utilised to find many innovation opportunities to increase the sustainability of beers supply chain, helping to ensure beer products can be enjoyed in a more sustainable future. Circular opportunities across the supply chain include:

• Agriculture and raw materials:

  Agriculture to grow barley, hops and other raw materials is a big part of where the beer supply chain interacts with biological systems. Some farming techniques can deplete soils, pollute air and water, and reduce the biological diversity that maintain natural systems.

• • There are more regenerative agriculture methods that employ techniques to replenish and improve the overall health of the local environment, supporting natural systems, rebuilding and enhancing ecosystems while preserving air and water quality.

  • Brewers can choose to purchase raw materials that have been grown using regenerative farming techniques. It may be necessary to engage with and support supply chain partners to adopt or even develop more regenerative practices.

• Use of alternative brewing materials

  • By looping in biological materials from other food processes that may be viewed as wastes, brewing can provide a way to gain greater value from these resources before they return to natural systems, as well as reducing beer's direct environmental footprint.

  • Examples of finding and utilising these kinds of materials include utilising waste bread as a substitute for barley or using other food system wastes as flavours.

• Brewing operations

  Many opportunities can be exploited in brewery operations to make them more circular across each of the three circular economy principles, particularly with respect to designing out waste and keeping products and materials in use:

• • Water

    • Reuse of water in non-product applications such as brewery cleaning.

    • Reuse of water in product, following sufficient treatment.

    • Treatment of wastewater with anaerobic digestion to generate and capture biogas.

    • Regeneration and restoration of natural water systems in the watershed the brewery interacts with.

• • Energy

    • Being efficient with the energy used in the brewery and designing out areas of energy wastage.

    • Use of renewable energy rather than fossil fuels. Renewable energy may be sourced from:

      • Biogas captured from wastewater treatment with anaerobic digestion and/or digestion of brewing co-products. Biogas can be utilised for heat and/or electricity generation.

      • On-site solar photovoltaic panels for electricity generation.

      • Purchasing renewable energy.

• • • In some situations, it may be possible to utilise excess heat generated in other industry processes.

  • Solid waste

    • Solid waste generated in brewing operations includes used packaging, spent processing aids and construction materials. Ideally solid waste should be designed out. However, where they are generated, they can be managed using the following principles, with the most preferred used first:

      • Maintaining and prolonging use

      • Reuse and redistributing

      • Refurbishment and remanufacture

      • Recycling

• Co-products

  Alongside beer, breweries produce valuable co-products. When viewed as feedstocks for other processes, brewing co-products such as yeast, spent grain and hops offer a multitude of possibilities for exploiting the nutrients they contain before they are returned to the environment. Opportunities range from low to high tech:

• • Use as animal feed.

  • Use as a food ingredient (speciality flour, yeast spreads).

  • Energy generation, this can be through:

    • Drying and combustion to generate electricity and/or heat.

    • Production of biogas (methane) via anaerobic digestion.

• • Using brewery co-products to create packaging materials.

  • Using hydrolysis and extraction processes to extract higher value chemicals such as:

    • Polyphenols

    • Tannin

    • Cellulose

    • Protein

Overall the circular economy concepts provide very useful lenses for innovation and long-term value. There are many opportunities right across the supply chain for brewers to innovate to make beer and brewing a positive part of the more circular economy. Brewers are in a strong position to use their skills to link other industries and systems together. Many of these opportunities offer not only environmental benefits but social, financial and economic ones as well.