2Sustain

Yesterday, I wrote about Unilever’s new goals regarding sustainable packaging.  Today, MillerCoors is making headlines with its newly released 2010 Sustainable Development report, which reveals several significant corporate sustainability achievements over the past year.

For instance, looking specifically at environmental stewardship in 2009, MillerCoors:

• actually exceeded its 2015 goal for waste reduction, by eliminating 20 percent of the amount of waste sent to landfill. In total, the company reuses or recycles nearly 100 percent of all brewery waste and achieved zero waste to landfill at its Trenton, Ohio and Elkton, Virginia breweries.

• reduced total energy consumption by 3.6 percent, lowered greenhouse gas emissions by 1.2 percent and renewed its commitment to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Leaders program, pledging to reduce corporate-wide greenhouse gas emissions eight percent by 2015.

• recorded a world-class ratio of 3.40 barrels of water for every barrel of beer at its Ft. Worth, Texas brewery.

• completed the largest installation of membrane bioreactor technology in the U.S.at its Elkton, Va. brewery.

• started engineering at its Elkton, Va. Brewery for a project to reuse biogas from an anaerobic wastewater treatment system to generate electrical power. The company already does this at two of its four anaerobic wastewater treatment systems.

• reduced packaging materials an estimated 11 million pounds in Coors Light and Coors Banquet secondary packaging.

• held its first annual Water Stewardship Month, which resulted in nearly 1,700 hours of volunteer time from employees toward watershed protection and improvement activities.

“Surpassing our 2015 waste reduction goal five years early is a phenomenal success that demonstrates the commitment and passion of MillerCoors people across all of our brewery operations,” says MillerCoors Chief Responsibility and Ethics Officer, Cornell Boggs. “We recognize that sustainable development requires a sustained commitment and we’re working to further improve our performance for generations to come. Great Beer, Great Responsibility defines our commitment to creating America’s Best Beer Company by growing our business the right way.”

The MillerCoors’ report, titled “Great Beer, Great Responsibility,”  is available here.