A Clean World: Minimising waste and carbon emissions

1
In a Cleaner
world, every
drop counts

In an attempt to do more with less, we’ve addressed our water usage in the brewing process. Since 2008 we’ve cut our water use per litre of beer by 28%. We now use 3.3 litres of water to make one litre of beer, beating our 2015 target of 3.5l/l.

We’re working to cut this down even further, to 3 litres of water per litre of beer.

2
In a Cleaner
world, waste
has value

Together with suppliers, distributors, retailers, municipalities and consumers we’re committed to the reduction of emissions and waste across our value chain by reusing and recycling our waste and packaging.

We’re on track to reach our target of a 50% reduction in on-site greenhouse gas emissions from our breweries by 2020. We’ve cut our global carbon emissions from on-site energy use by 35% since 2008 and reduced our absolute emissions by nearly one million tonnes.

3
A Sustainable
value chain

A cleaner world can be achieved by reusing, recycling and cutting waste, so we’re in the process of cutting waste from our manufacturing processes and reusing materials to create a sustainable production chain. We’re already well on track with this.

Roughly 99% of spent grain from our breweries is reused by farmers for animal feed or for renewable energy. This creates value and prevents waste from being diverted to landfill. This year our breweries reused or recycled 89.6% of their general waste.

We’ve also put a lot of effort into ensuring that our packaging is sustainably designed and produced to reduce the impact on local environments. More than 80% of all the beer sold by SAB in South Africa is packaged in returnable glass bottles or cans. Both these materials are 100% recyclable and glass can be endlessly recycled. In the case of cans, they have a 72% rate of recycle, as compared to plastic at 30%.

Read more about some of our other sustainability projects, here.