In Conversation: Katie Wallace

Sustainability is core to the mission at New Belgium Brewing Company, where a cold beer depends on good water and healthy soil.

“I get it. When I’m opening a beer, I also don’t want to think about climate change,” says Katie Wallace, director of social and environmental responsibility at New Belgium Brewing Company. “Beer is a place where we relax and forget about the world’s problems.”

But beer relies on a stable climate, as it’s more than 90% water, and it also depends on healthy soil to grow barley and hops. Fort Collins, Colorado–based New Belgium may make less than 0.5% of the beer sold in the U.S., but the 100% employee-owned brewery is making big moves in the area of sustainability.

New Belgium—which also has a brewery in Asheville, North Carolina—aims to be carbon neutral by 2050. The B Corp (B Corps are certified by the nonprofit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency) is currently diverting 99.9% of its waste from the landfill and is a Platinum-certified Zero Waste Business. In 2016, New Belgium found a way to compost organic material collected at its process water treatment plant, which resulted in a great reduction in their total waste to landfill. “We’re increasing operational efficiencies, we’re trying to push the needle in our supply chain, and we’re asking our elected officials to let the market react to the science,” Wallace says.

The brewery knows good water makes good beer—and hoppy beers may require even more water. New Belgium’s water comes from the Cache la Poudre and Colorado rivers in Fort Collins and the countless streams that feed a 20,000-acre watershed in Asheville. As such, the brewery is committed to making sure those rivers and streams are protected. Currently, New Belgium’s water use ratio hovers around 4:1 (barrels of water per barrel of beer), but they’re striving for a 3.5:1 ratio as they emphasize production improvements and continue testing the reuse of treated process water for industrial applications in Fort Collins. “As we ramped up production at our new brewery in Asheville, we knew our water use ratio would struggle until we filled out our capacity. The ratio is already improving, and we have our eyes on the prize to achieve a 3.5:1 ratio by 2020.”

We recently sat down with Wallace to find out why sustainability is such a core part of the mission at New Belgium, and just how they’re making these changes happen.