Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
The Beer-Water Nexus
Does the path to clean, safe water lead through a brewery?
Andy Wales, head of sustainable development at global brewer SABMiller, maintains it can happen. The maker of Miller beer — and 20 other brands, from Aguila in Colombia to Zolotaya Bochka Klassicheskoye in Russia — likes the environmental angle, but the main impetus is to ensure production of their products in what is a highly variable business from location to location.
“Water is obviously a critical part of high quality beer,” Wales said by telephone from London. One important part of this equation is figuring out how to use less water and still make good beer.
What this means in practice is working with groups like World Wildlife Fund and GIZ, a German organization that coordinates international development and sustainable development efforts. It also means recognizing the potential for water scarcity and the need for conservation. The four countries seen as having the biggest long-term water risk are South Africa, Ukraine, Tanzania and Peru, Wales said.
“The goal is to reduce our water use per liter of beer by 25 percent by 2015 over a 2008 base,” Wales said. “So that’s from 4.6 liters per liter of beer to 3.5 liters by 2015. Water efficiency’s a big part of our operations everywhere.”
What does this have to do with making good beer? In South Africa, beer-making hops grow in the George region of the Eastern Cape — an area where weather patterns are shifting due to climate change. To keep the hops growing and beer flowing, SABMiller worked with a government scientific research organization called CSIR to understand risks to that watershed, and risks to the supply of water for irrigation of hops.
In Tanzania, water is scarce for another reason: infrastructure. The country’s biggest city, Dar es Salaam, is home to 4 million people, with a water supply for only 400,000 drawn from a source 90 kilometers away. Because the infrastructure to carry the water has problems, many local businesses dig for water, draining the water table. Since Dar es Salaam is a coastal city, digging for water near the ocean allows salt water to intrude into the water supply. One response to this is to invest in equipment to protect the main water supply, Wales said. Another is to seek better enforcement and regulation of ground water.
Blue business washes in
Green is good and blue is better.
Keeping a business sustainable – or blue – goes beyond philanthropic nods to the environment. It needs to be a core business goal, says Adam Werbach, creator of Wal-Mart’s sustainability program and chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi S, the sustainability wing of the marketing and consultancy company.
Blue innovation embraces the social, cultural, and economic aspects of business along with green issues like protecting our last wild places and reducing carbon emissions.
“Sustainability is about long-term profitability. It doesn’t mean just the environment,” Werbach told a room of 100 business professionals in Toronto on Wednesday, pointing to the four-part breakdown of sustainability built on social, economic, cultural and environmental trends in addition to an integral value of transparency.
“The idea is to think a little bit broader. Of course we need to protect the environment, but there are so many other things to connect to it,” Werbach said, exploring a theme in his new book Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto.
“This is an extraordinary business opportunity that’s been left to the environmentalists and we need to steal it back and make it the business opportunity to grow companies that are going to be the companies of the future.”
Victoria Kamsler, chief ethics officer and research director at Greenfiniti Consulting and Investment in Toronto and former professor of environmental ethics at Princeton University, said Werbach was on to something with his ideas about internal changes in business culture having to do with transparency and engagement, and motivating employees to engage in purposes that align with their own values and ideals larger than themselves.
I believe I read somewhere that consumers were outraged to find out wal-mart actually has soda refrigerators. But now that the backlights have been replaced, it has held off the public boycott. Customers of wal-mart should begin to see an estimated .000000002345678910111213% difference in global temperatures by 2069. And a .00000777777775656565656566565656646464% price decrease because they feel they should pass the savings onto the consumers. I feel that with such ground breaking ideas as this one, we are on the road to a better more blueish green tomorrow!
