When looking back at 2020 as a whole, there’s a lot to be said for being able to focus on sustainability despite the challenges of running a business during a pandemic. In our third year of publishing a sustainability report, it feels good to look back and track our progress. While we met most of our goals this year, and improved in a lot of categories like energy use and waste management, publishing this report each year holds us accountable in categories where we don’t meet benchmarks we had set the year before.
At Aslan, we see it as our responsibility as a large craft brewery to lessen our impact as much as possible. Making organic craft beer takes a lot of resources as it is, meaning it’s necessary to offset that in any way we can. Luckily, a lot of our utilities can be offset by purchasing restoration credits. For example, we can buy Water Restoration Certificates through the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. Similar to purchasing carbon or energy offsets, Water Restoration Certificates ensure that the water we use in our business is accounted for, and are used to fund restoration projects all over the nation. These credits can end up accounting for millions of gallons of water restored in reclamation projects such as irrigation infrastructure upgrades, water management agreements and natural hydrologic restoration.
The sustainability report requires a lot of number crunching through stacks of utility bills, triple checking our work, and experiencing the ups and downs of whether or not we meet all of our goals. Oftentimes, running a sustainable business and being a B Corp feels like we are in constant competition with ourselves. Year after year, we truly do try and improve on our footprint by introducing new programs, like our 2019 addition of the plastic film recycling program. Moving forward, we are excited to see what 2021 brings in terms of sustainability! This year we will be contributing to salmon safety, restructuring some of our other efforts, and hopefully meeting our goal on water reclamation.
None of this would be possible without the support of our community, who has been willing to help us continue to make organic craft beer for the people. Our hope is to be continually as transparent as possible with you all. Thank you for reading and being an active part of making Aslan a better institution for the planet.
