Adnams was established in 1872 and with 147 years of history behind us, we plan to be around for many more years to come. Adnams has sustainability built into the heart of our business and we’re constantly working to reduce our impact on the environment. We've done a lot already, but there's still more we can do on our sustainable journey.
Yesterday (1st May 2019), the UK parliament declared a climate emergency. This is in response to the IPCC report which stated that to avoid more than 1.5 degrees centigrade rise in global warming, global emissions would need to fall by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero by 2050.
Adnams has put measures in place to reduce our carbon emissions, alongside reducing water usage, minimising waste and ensuring we support biodiversity. In 2013, Adnams was the first UK brewery to calculate the carbon footprint for our own bottled beer range followed by undertaking a full life-cycle assessment for our water useage in order to put reduction measures in place.
Adnams Sustainability Manager, Ben Orchard, comments: "Ensuring we all do our bit to engage in environmental issues and move towards a more sustainable lifestyle is essential to be able to continue enjoying our beautiful planet. Acting sustainably as a business, as a consumer or as a government is simply now the new social norm, so it is positive to see the Government's recent declaration of a climate change emergency acknowledging this. We must all play our part and Adnams has been doing just that as part of our ongoing sustainability story for nearly two decades now. You are never too small to make a difference."
Here are some of the ways we've reduced our carbon emissions:
100% renewable electricity
We’ve switched our electricity supplies to 100% renewable sources emitting zero carbon. If we had not switched, our carbon emissions would have been 875 tonnes in 2018.
Sustainable Distribution Centre
Our Distribution Centre was built in 2006 featuring a living, green roof, lime-hemp walls and wooden glulam beams. Rainwater is harvested from the roof and is used to flush our loos. The thick roof and walls naturaly insulate the building meaning that it requires no heating in the winter or cooling in the summer, and we have installed movement-sensor LED lights to reduce our electricty useage.
Using conventional bricks for the building would have emitted at least 300 tonnes of carbon, however, it’s estimated that the lime-hemp bricks have locked in between 100 and 150 tonnes of CO2 into the walls in addition to the reduced carbon emissions from the higher operational efficiency of the site.
Lightweighting our bottles
In 2007, we light-weighted our Adnams 500ml glass bottles from 453g to 299g. We trimmed the weight down further in 2015 to 280g, removing 173g of glass per bottle. This has saved over 1,100 tonnes of CO2 in production of the bottles. It also means that carbon is saved in the transporting of bottles as we can fit more bottles into our lorries.
Our beer cans are made with up to 90% recycled aluminium, which reduces the carbon emissions from their production because it takes 95% less energy to make a can from recycled materials than virgin material.
Electric vehicles
Our Southwold store uses an electric van and we’ve installed five electric vehicle chargers at our managed properties. With zero emissions on the road, electric vehicles do not emit carbon or negatively impact on air quality.
This is just a small part of our sustainability initiatives which run through the heart of our business.
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