Green Beer in September?
Brewers Convene During GABF to Discuss Sustainability
Un-conference and Workshop to Focus on Environmentally Sound Beer Making
Denver, CO - October, 2009 - In addition to the usual tastings, awards competitions, entertainment, and educational sessions at The Great American Beer Festival, brewers this year had a chance to focus on how to make their brewing operations and business practices more sustainable. An un-conference and workshop, organized by organic producer Bison Brewing and leading sustainability firm ClimatePath created a forum for brewers to learn, teach, share and debate the best practices and biggest hurdles in making breweries more sustainable.
According to Dan Del Grande, owner of Bison, “Consumers care more then ever about the environmental profile of the products they consume, and craft brewers have an opportunity to become leaders in offering organic micro brew beer that taste good while doing good. I wanted to create a forum for brewers to collaborate on the key issues in making beer a more sustainable product, and work together on meeting this challenge.”
Added Dave Rochlin, CEO of ClimatePath, “Industry collaboration is the key to making real progress. We want to share the carbon foot printing and offsetting work we do for one brewery with others, so that they can accelerate their own progress in fighting climate change, with reduced effort and expense. This un-conference event is a fantastic chance for brewers to learn from one another.”
Issues discussed in the workshop include water, carbon, renewable energy, eco-labeling standards, and waste reduction. The un-conference format allows participants to help shape the agenda to focus on the issues most important to them. This event was a first step in creating an ongoing industry dialog on sustainability opportunities and best practices. The event was held Saturday morning at 9:30 AM at the Wynkoop Brewing Company in downtown Denver. The Guild website is coming soon.
About Bison Brewing - Bison is an award winning craft brewer that sells organic beer in 12 states (and growing). Bison believes that sustainable and ecologically sound food production is the best way to protect our environment, save energy and ensure the sustainability of American farming. Bison recently completed a carbon footprint assessment in order to understand where their greening efforts would have the most impact.
About ClimatePath - www.climatepath.org ClimatePath has created a more credible and transparent way for individuals and business of all sizes to reduce and offset the impact of their carbon footprint via conservation and carbon offsets. For brewers, ClimatePath offers a turnkey and 'open source' approach to becoming climate neutral, that includes in-depth footprint modeling, offsetting via mission-based 'green energy' and 'fair trade carbon' projects, third party verification, and tools that let consumers view both projects and offset methodology. ClimatePath recently completed and published a life cycle based foot printing study for Bison. ClimatePath also hosts a foot printing wiki for beer professionals online at beerfootprinting.wikispaces.com.
