Whether small or large, brewers need a lot of water to brew a gallon of beer. All brewers understand that water shortages threaten their businesses. The aspiration to be sustainable is driven both by a public relations strategy to portray themselves as environmentally friendly and by a concern about the bottom line. Because brewers are selling a product that’s mostly water, they need to figure out how to build resilience into their supply chains.
A stunning success in reducing beer’s water footprint involves a partnership among MillerCoors, barley farmers in Idaho, and the Nature Conservancy. The goal was to protect Silver Creek, the world-famous trout stream near Ketchum, Idaho, by reducing the surrounding farmers’ use of water. Modernizing irrigation systems has reduced the consumption of well water pumped from the aquifer, thus protecting flow levels in Silver Creek by helping to maintain the existing water table. Local barley farmers have now cut water use by 550 million gallons a year, according to MillerCoors.
LINK (via: PacificStandard)
