By sharing a pool of kegs rather than owning their own, over 200 leading craft brewers helped reduce their collective carbon footprint by over 3 million kg of CO2e in 2013.
These findings, based on a study by John Heckman, Ph.D with PE International and commissioned by MicroStar Logistics, will be used as a benchmark to help the craft beer industry further minimize its carbon footprint each year.
"Sustainability is critically important to our customers and the craft beer industry overall," said Dan Vorlage, MicroStar's Vice President of Marketing and Business Development. "We're proud to help brewers achieve their sustainability goals by leveraging our unique model, our scale and our logistics expertise to take empty keg miles off the road. We see these results as just the beginning of what this industry can accomplish."
"To put this in perspective, these craft brewers saved the equivalent amount of CO2e emitted by nearly 3 million pounds of coal by working together to reduce their total truck mileage," said Dr. Heckman. "It's clear that MicroStar's pooled asset model is inherently more sustainable than the alternative model of a brewer owning their own kegs. More importantly, getting to know the team at MicroStar, we can see that they are personally committed to continuous improvement and working closely with the brewer community to have an even greater positive impact in the future."
MicroStar also recently joined the EPA's SmartWay Program committing to further track and reduce transportation-related emissions and fuel use. Through programs like SmartWay, MicroStar uses the collective leverage of their customer community to increase the adoption of environmentally-conscious tools and approaches by their freight carriers.
