Sustainability benchmarking

The median water use ratio, based upon an industry survey of up to 250 breweries, will be published this summer by the Brewers Association. For breweries in the 1,000-10,000 barrels per year range, it was 8.1 beer/bbl water. For comparison, a water use ratio of 5- 6 bbl beer/bbl water is said by commentators outside the industry to be about average for the mid-sized craft brewers, while the larger corporate brewers can boast WURs as low as 3, which is inconsistent with this survey data. Indeed, the focus group used by the BA for detailed sustainability metrics is around 4. The discerning difference was that there are those operations that pay attention to such metrics and then most operations that haven’t gone down such a journey yet.

Significant industrial users (SIU) are companies which have a federal promulgated standard for pretreatment permitting applied to them. The requirements for SIU status include a) accounting for 5% of the hydraulic or organic load of a municipal WWTP; b) the likelihood that operation will upset the municipal plant and c) discharging over 25,000 gpd. At a WRU of 8.1, a brewer would need to be producing 41,000 bpy to be considered an SIU; however, because of other requirements, smaller brewers will often come under pressure to pay a sewer surcharge as well. Although these smaller brewers are learning and trying to be sustainable, they are on an early stage of the journey compared to large corporates, but see this in their future.