It’s here—March 22. For me, World Water Day means so many things, reminds me of so many things, and especially reminds me who I am—from growing up splashing around the Great Lakes to pouring water over my sweat-drenched face after a hard-fought soccer match. Our bodies are mostly water, and of course we cannot live without it. Fast forward to present—my position at MillerCoors is all about sustainability, and a lot about water. Beer cannot live without it; it is in fact, mostly water.
Photo courtesy of Dayna Gross.
It’s beyond cool that MillerCoors is so passionate about sustainability and in particular water stewardship. That’s why I’m here, and why you should check out all this cool blue MillerCoors water action to remind us of our most precious resource, which brings to life everything, from bath time to Miller Time. Check it out, because we do all of this and so much more here at MillerCoors:
- Conducted a comprehensive water footprint of our total business operations, from the barley field to the brewery to the store shelf, to assess and improve upon our water use
- Saved more than 270 million gallons of water on our Showcase Barley Farm (Idaho) from 2011–2012, in just its first two years
- Reduced water consumption at our Milwaukee Brewery by 100 million gallons per year through a new cooling system that uses recirculated water—note: this water doesn’t go into your beer…
- Converted all of our Fort Worth Brewery’s packaging line belts to use dry, waterless lubricants, saving an estimated 10 million gallons of water every year
- Implemented ionic waterless rinsing to clean aluminum cans before we fill them with beer at our Albany Brewery, saving another 10 million gallons of water annually
- Reduced our water-to-beer ratio at our breweries to around 3.8 to 1, whereas the industry standard is closer to 5 to 1… and we’re not anywhere near finished yet
- We like to roll up our sleeves. Every year more than 1,000 MillerCoors employees from all over the country participate in what we have designated our “Great Water Month” (September), in which we get out and volunteer in the community, focusing on various water stewardship projects to clean and protect these vital natural resources. We also partner financially with various select projects
And frankly, as a responsible society, we should all play a role in sustainably managing our water resources, and no one person or entity can do it all. But that doesn’t mean that here at MillerCoors we can’t try our darndest to do exactly that.