Beer & A Better World - Anheuser-Busch InBev

Our efforts don’t stop there. We recycle all our
electronic equipment with an external vendor,
and we return our printer cartridges for recycling.
The Jupiler brewery works with most of its
suppliers to take back waste products.
Employees and business partners are made
aware of recycling and waste-sorting. We
encourage employees and business partners
to print fewer documents, and we ask them to
use double-sided copying. Plastic bottles are
recycled through a public service normally
available only to private consumers.
Packaging
At our brewery in Jupille, 97 percent of all production
consists of reusable types of packaging,
such as bottles and kegs. On average, the
brewery washes 3 million bottles a day. Each
bottle is used 35 times, and each bottle lasts
for seven years.
Numerous studies demonstrate the ecological
superiority of reusable bottles when used within a
250-kilometer radius and when reused more than
20 times. Bottle recycling helps households reduce
their waste production, and it creates local jobs in
production, distribution and stock management.
Water Use
Wastewater management is another important
part of our environmental efforts. Our objectives
are to reduce the amount of wastewater by
reducing overall water consumption and to
optimize wastewater quality.
The Leuven brewery has reduced water usage
by 18 percent since 2003. This decrease can
be attributed in part to investments made
in automated, more cost-effective cleaning
systems — most notably a system called
Cleaning in Place — and to water consumption
being checked weekly as a key performance
indicator. Water also is being reused in several
processes, and studies are made to expand the
reuse of effluent water for steam production and
cooling. Water audits and specific motivational
campaigns also seek to reduce the waste of water.
To optimize wastewater quality, our brewery
in Leuven invested in a new anaerobic waterpurification
station in 2003. We also constantly
search for cleaning products that are low
in phosphorus, and we are monitoring
draining parameters.
Our Jupille brewery is located in a water-protection
zone. Some of the site’s water is supplied by three
springs, and some comes directly from a water
reservoir in Eupen. The brewery initiated a project
focused on three objectives — optimizing the
efficiency of water usage, improving the quality
of residual water and protecting the purity of
spring water.
We have achieved a decrease of 20 percent
in water usage since 1993. To achieve the
second and third objectives, we built a water
purification plant in 2008 with a capacity to
treat wastewater for a city of 260,000 people.
For comparison, the nearby city of Liège,
the fifth-largest city in Belgium, has about
193,000 inhabitants.
Energy Use
Another important part of InBev Belgium’s
environmental performance is our reduction
of energy use and emissions. Nationwide, the
implementation of the company’s Voyager Plant
Optimization (VPO) program has helped reduce
energy consumption in our plants. We carefully
monitor energy use, and we have instituted
systems that help create higher efficiencies for
our production lines. VPO also reduces waste
during production. We conduct regular energy
audits, and we employ devices such as timers
to reduce energy used for illumination in
transit areas.
Our objectives are to reduce the amount of
wastewater by reducing overall water consumption
and to optimize wastewater quality.
Global Citizenship Report 2008-2009 | 45