New Belgium Brewery Case Study
New Belgium Brewery Case Study
Social Responsibility and Ethics Management
New Belgium Brewery Case Study
The goal of New Belgium Brewery was to produce world-class beers, and do so while kindling the social, environmental, and cultural change. The company became successful, and stood as a corporate leader in environmental sustainability, by being an example of how a company could incorporate environmental concerns into business decisions. Yet, they also faced some ethical challenges, as they were not able to reach their environmental goals in the areas of electricity, natural gas, water, waste and recycling, and carbon emissions. When NBB conducted their study in 1998 to analyze carbon emissions, they found that the single largest factor of emissions was generated from its electricity consumption, emissions released by coal-fired power plants (Carroll, pg. 689). In response to this, the owners decide to source their electricity instead from 100 percent renewable, carbon-free wind sources. They also introduced a combination of solar PV, cogeneration, metering, and control initiatives in an attempt to become a net-zero purchaser of electricity. Another ethical issue related to NBB is their natural gas consumption. Their top initiative to conserve natural gas is its use of the Steinecker “Merlin” brew kettle; however, although they have been able to cut boiling time in half, the boiling operation also consumes a large amount of natural gas for sanitization. In relation to water usage, the average brewery uses five gallons of water just to produce one gallon of beer. NBB ratio is only 3:8:1 (Carroll, pg. 690). Their wastewater is then treated, and the process creates methane, which is captured and used to cogenerate power for the brewery. The ethical factor here is that even though they are trying to reduce waste and pollution in the short and long term, they cannot help but to create it during their production of beer regardless of how hard they
Social Responsibility and Ethics Management
New Belgium Brewery Case Study
The goal of New Belgium Brewery was to produce world-class beers, and do so while kindling the social, environmental, and cultural change. The company became successful, and stood as a corporate leader in environmental sustainability, by being an example of how a company could incorporate environmental concerns into business decisions. Yet, they also faced some ethical challenges, as they were not able to reach their environmental goals in the areas of electricity, natural gas, water, waste and recycling, and carbon emissions. When NBB conducted their study in 1998 to analyze carbon emissions, they found that the single largest factor of emissions was generated from its electricity consumption, emissions released by coal-fired power plants (Carroll, pg. 689). In response to this, the owners decide to source their electricity instead from 100 percent renewable, carbon-free wind sources. They also introduced a combination of solar PV, cogeneration, metering, and control initiatives in an attempt to become a net-zero purchaser of electricity. Another ethical issue related to NBB is their natural gas consumption. Their top initiative to conserve natural gas is its use of the Steinecker “Merlin” brew kettle; however, although they have been able to cut boiling time in half, the boiling operation also consumes a large amount of natural gas for sanitization. In relation to water usage, the average brewery uses five gallons of water just to produce one gallon of beer. NBB ratio is only 3:8:1 (Carroll, pg. 690). Their wastewater is then treated, and the process creates methane, which is captured and used to cogenerate power for the brewery. The ethical factor here is that even though they are trying to reduce waste and pollution in the short and long term, they cannot help but to create it during their production of beer regardless of how hard they