The brand I have decided to do my blog on is Sierra Nevada Brewing. Sierra Nevada is a craft brewery that sells numerous styles of craft beer and have location is California and North Carolina. The reason I picked this brand is for one I love their beer and for the other is because I have been to their location in North Carolina and seen first hand how Sierra Nevada is taking the next steps to being a true green brewery.
There’s cost-benefit, and there’s doing the right thing.
Our first brewhouse was a hand-built hodgepodge of old dairy equipment. Back then, “reduce, reuse, recycle” wasn’t a catchphrase but a business model. Over the years, we’ve passed up chances to brew more easily and cheaply, choosing not to shortchange our values or the environment (Sierra Nevada, 2020). I believe that Sierra Nevada is all about their consumers and the community. For example when the wildfires hit in California a couple years ago Sierra Nevada which has a brewery based in California, started brewing a beer that all the profits would go to help the communities that were affected by the fires. They didn’t stop there, they gave out their beer recipe to other craft breweries asking them to brew that beer at their facilities and promise that all sales would all go back to California to help those who lost their homes and belonging. So how more socially responsible could a brand get when you ask complete strangers to make and sell a beer and give all the profits to people you had never met. It goes to show how Sierra Nevada knows that some of those that lost during the fire were the ones that could have came and enjoyed a beer at their California location.
I could not find any reports of Sierra Nevada being involved in any cases where they were accused of not conducting themselves in any manner besides the good for their communities and environment.
I feel Sierra Nevada is definitely green for the environment.
Chico, CA Brewery
Visit us and you’ll likely park under solar panels—just a portion of our 10,751 panels covering enough roof space to span 3.5 football fields. But there’s far more brewery sustainability you don’t see, from C02 capture and heat reuse to wastewater treatment and composting.
Mills River, NC Brewery
In 2016, our North Carolina facility was the first production brewery in the U.S. to be certified LEED® Platinum—the highest level awarded by the most widely used green building rating system in the world.
I saw the way they used the grains that were left over from brewing and gave it to local farmers. I saw the gardens they were growing so they could use those products instead of buying from a supplier and I also saw that they used eco friendly cups in case one was left behind and it would dissolve into the ground and not harm anything.
So I believe Sierra Nevada is a prime example of how a brand can not only make a profit but can be green for the environment and help teach the communities they serve to help be green as well.
Kyle's Blog 