Carlsberg is Halving Water Usage at Breweries

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Carlsberg is Halving Water Usage at Breweries

The Danish brewer, Carlsberg, whose beers also include Holsten Pils and San Miguel, said it would eliminate brewery emissions and halve its water usage by 2030 as part of a new sustainability drive.

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This will include closing down small coal power stations at breweries in China, India and Poland, replacing them with renewable sources such as solar panels and biogas.

Carlsberg’s resolve to go green had been hardened by Trump announcing plans for the US to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, its chief executive Cees t‘Hart said.

T’Hart said Carlsberg’s plans, which include using only renewable energy to brew beer by 2022, were equivalent to taking 160,000 cars off the road.

The company does not expect to incur extra costs because it will shift investment from elsewhere in the business and expects the sustainability plan to reduce costs, such as energy bills, over time.

It will also hire PhD students to work in its laboratories on ways to reduce its carbon footprint and ask suppliers, such as firms that make packaging or grow barley, to implement their own environmental measures.

As well as aiming for zero emissions, Carlsberg will also step up its alcohol-free offering to target irresponsible drinking.

Carlsberg Circular Community

The beer-in-hand emission reductions will be targeted through the Carlsberg Circular Community (CCC), which engages partners in the value chain to reduce emissions through closed-loop practices. Carlsberg has a 2017 target to induct 17 members into the CCC, and as part of the new strategy, this target will be extended to 30 by 2022.

There are currently nine members in the CCC, and while no target has been set for 2030, Hoffmeyer claimed that the circular economy was being elevated from a quantitative target to be used as the framework to reach carbon and water reductions.

"What we’re doing with the new strategy is to take this circular way of thinking and use it as a framework for creating our projects to achieve our targets,” Hoffmeyer said. “The realisation we’ve had is that we have to expand it and look at it from zero-carbon and zero-wastewater angles as well. We’re lifting the concept and aiming them at our quantitative targets and using it as a lever rather than being a target itself.”

This way of thinking is also being applied to Carlsberg’s goal to receive Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C) accreditation for three products. C2C is only awarded when products fit into biological and technical cycles that produce no waste streams, and the Danish brewers have achieved two certifications for Somersby and Carlsberg cans in 2015 and the Kronenbourg 1664 bottle in 2016.

According to Hoffmeyer, Carlsberg is one track to achieve the third accreditation in 2017, at which point the C2C concept will be embedded into the strategy, rather than set as an outright target. Carlsberg will continue to run C2C analysis in the design process for products, using it in the “thinking and framework” of the strategy.

Zero wastewater

Closed-loop practices will also form an integral part of the zero-wastewater target. Carlsberg has already worked with WWF to identify breweries situated in areas with a high water-security risk and has developed targets accordingly.

Since 2010, Carlsberg has achieved a 9% reduction in relative water consumption at breweries, and as of 2016, its water efficiency was 3.2 hectolitres (hl) per hl of production.

For breweries located in the high-risk areas, predominantly Asia, Carlsberg is aiming to reduce water consumption below 2 hl/hl well below the global best practice average of 3.4hl/hl. By 2022, Carlsberg aims to reduce water consumption by 25% in breweries, with the more ambitious targets placed on high-risk sites.

In total, Carlsberg is committed to reducing water consumption by 50% by 2030, bringing the company to a “world-class standard” of 1.7hl/hl in breweries. Hoffmeyer claimed that this target justifies the ambition of zero-wastewater because Carlsberg will have to do “everything humanly possible” to reach that goal, before technology and innovations begin to integrate into the marketplace.

Elsewhere, the company will only buy low-impact coolers that use natural refrigerants from 2022. No specific waste reduction targets will be outlined under the strategy, but Hoffmeyer claimed the closed-loop ethos being adopted by Carlsberg will mean that waste management is essential to hitting the water and carbon goals.

“We haven’t got direct waste targets as part of Together Towards Zero, but it’s an implicit part of the strategy,” Hoffmeyer added. “If we reduce the waste from our breweries, we’ll reduce our carbon footprint and reduce the water usage. It will also be part of creating better uses for our products.”

On example of where the circular way of thinking is already being applied is at the 18 Carlsberg-owned biogas plants. Any wastewater produce is cleaned to be used as service water in breweries, or used to recharge groundwater, while the biogas extracted from the process is used for renewables and any by-product used as fertilizer.

In order to achieve a “total circular motion”, Hoffmeyer suggested that the company will look at creating renewable energy from the solid waste and not just from the wastewater treatment.

Sources: The Guardian and Edie

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