The Brewers Association (BA) has released the 2015 Sustainability Benchmarking Report. The report includes utility, resource and production data from 79 breweries, representing a robust variety of production sizes and geographic locations. This report provides a platform to share best practices to identify how to use water more efficiently, generate less wastewater and solid waste, decrease total energy usage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Moving forward, data for this annual report will be collected through the BA Sustainability Benchmarking Tools. Individual brewers can input their utility usage and compare their data to other participating breweries. Using the iEHS Mobile Metrics platform, brewers can enter target usage and cost values and track ongoing monthly performance. Breweries will be able to easily identify areas to improve efficiencies and increase profitability by utilizing the Sustainability Dashboard tool to compare themselves to industry averages of similar size breweries. Both tools are usable on a web browser or mobile device. These tools will increase the number of participants contributing benchmarking information, forming a clearer picture of industry practices. The information will then be organized, verified, analyzed and distributed though the annual Sustainability Benchmarking Report. Individual breweries will not be identified in the report.
Increasingly, environmental stewardship is a priority for beer drinkers, brewers and future generations. Maintaining a healthy balance between stewardship, social enrichment, and economic vitality is important to the future of craft brewing. BA members have expressed a desire to benchmark key performance indicators (KPIs) on a consistent basis in order to set aggressive, but realistic, goals and targets. Through the Sustainability Benchmarking Report and Sustainability Manuals, the BA and the sustainability subcommittee encourages conscientious brewing practices that will ensure the long-term success of the craft beer industry.