By Michele Marchetti

Posted: 11.06.09 | Tagged: recycling, reuse, waste

What does Fido's dinner have in common with your beer? They were both made from yeast. Left-over yeast is just one of the many by-products, not to mention garbage, produced from the business of making beer. We spoke to Kim Marotta, VP of corporate social responsibility at MillerCoors, a RecycleBank Rewards Partner; and Lisa Quezada, sustainable development policy manager, about how the company reduces waste.

What are some of the more creative uses the company has found for what would otherwise be regarded as trash?
We donate used bubble wrap to non-profit agencies like Goodwill. And here in Milwaukee, our empty barrels are donated to the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD). MMSD then retrofits them into rain barrels and sells them at cost to the community.

Like other breweries, your spent brewers yeast is sold to food companies for use in canned soups and pet food. How else is it used?
We have an ethanol plant at our Golden, Colorado brewery and we use spent yeast from the brewing process to generate fuel grade ethanol. We currently produce more than a million gallons of fuel-grade ethanol, but we have the capacity to produce more than three million gallons each year.

Any other noteworthy sustainability efforts?
In the U.S., there are an estimated 2 billion pallets in circulation daily, and approximately 95 percent of these are wood pallets, which typically end up in landfills. We have now converted all of our pallets to 100 percent recyclable plastic, made from recycled content. Once these pallets have been in use for some time and are worn down, the vendor actually shreds them and remakes them again. They use post industrial plastic and other recycled plastic, like car bumpers, political signs and playschool sets—so it's a total close loop process.

How has your environmental philosophy trickled down to employees?
Kelly Harris, one of our line workers, volunteered to reduce the amount of waste at the brewery he works for in Ohio. He presented a 5-year plan and because of his creativity, drive and passion, the company actually created a full-time environmental position for him to help spearhead this at the brewery. In one year they went from sending 47 tons of waste to the landfill per month to 32 tons. He also took it upon himself to reach out to local bars to find out how they're recycling. When he learned that not much was going on, he would sit down and, on the back of a bar napkin, throw out some figures of how much they could actually save. Another example of something created by our employees is a "stash your trash" program where people got rid of their trash cans in their offices. When that trash can isn't readily available, you start to realize how many times you have to get up to throw something out.

Is "Stash Your Trash" something that's happening in all of your offices?
We'd like it to be. While we work on implementing the program corporate-wide, Kelly Harris is once again our ambassador for zero waste—he already has worked with our Ohio brewery to remove waste paper baskets from the location's offices.