Sustainable Spirits and Brewing

Kentucky Sustainable Spirits & Brewing Initiative (SSBI)

One area of focus for KPPC’s sustainable manufacturing services in 2019 and 2020 was providing assistance to the spirits, brewing, and wine making industries in Kentucky. Partnering with the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet’s Division of Compliance Assistance (DCA), KPPC worked on a series of webinars and workshops to assist the beverage industry with incorporating sustainable manufacturing practices into their business operations. In addition, KPPC provides no cost technical assistance directly to Kentucky beverage manufacturers. The Sustainable Spirits and Brewing Initiative (SSBI) was focused on evaluating energy during the first year of training and then water, materials and waste during the second year.

SSBI Assistance Strategy

A key aspect of understanding how energy, or any other environmental consideration, relates to operations and can influence business decision making is to look at usage or efficiency in terms of production quantities. KPPC’s approach is to assist manufacturers with applying production and energy use data and develop an energy use ratio (EUR) and a greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) ratio. KPPC has developed an easy to use EUR-GHG Calculator tool specifically for the spirits and brewing industry to assist a facility with gaining this insight to their operations.

Value stream mapping is a tool manufacturers typically use to combine material processing steps with important productivity related data to help an organization with planning, implementation and improvement initiatives. A sustainable value stream map (Sus-VSM) is a value stream map with sustainability related data added to aid in identifying key process steps where improvements in sustainability performance can be made. KPPC provides assistance with understanding and applying a Sus-VSM to facility operations.

SSBI Training Series

A series of knowledge transfer events in the form of webinars and workshops has been designed to provide technical training related to sustainability specifically for the beverage industry. Presentation materials for the webinars and workshops will be made available here as they are developed and delivered.

Webinar 1: Sustainable Value Stream Mapping for Spirits, Brewing and Wine Making
Recorded: April 11, 2019.

This webinar presents the EUR-GHG Calculator, a tool developed by the Kentucky Pollution Prevention Center (KPPC) specifically for the beverage industry to calculate an energy use ratio (EUR) and a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Scope 2) ratio per unit of production. An example using data representative of a distillery is also presented.

The majority of the webinar provides an overview of the development of a sustainable value stream map (Sus-VSM). A Sus-VSM is an approach to overlay sustainability data on the value stream of a business to visualize and identify opportunities for improvement in sustainability performance and cost savings.

Find out more and view the Sustainable Value Stream Mapping recorded webinar.

Workshop 1: Energizing Sustainable Growth for Spirits, Brewing and Wine Making
Date: May 22, 2019.

Location: Goodwood Brewing Company

This workshop continued the training on sustainable value stream mapping that began with the first webinar. Participants were encouraged to complete their EUR/GHG calculator and begin a process flow diagram of their operations. A detailed approach to further developing the Sus-VSM was presented along with a tour of the operations at Goodwood Brewing. Solar thermal technology was also presented as a potential opportunity along with implementation considerations.

Training in 2020

Another set of webinar/workshop knowledge transfer events were planned for 2020 intended to build on the tools and techniques shared in the previous training events. The focus for this series was on water use, materials and waste applied to distilling, brewing and wine making processes.

Webinar 2: Sustainable Water Consumption for Spirits, Brewing and Wine Making
Recorded: April 23, 2020.

This webinar provided training on how to map water use and identify reduction opportunities for sustainable operations. Expert guidance on how to save water and reduce costs by analyzing a facility’s water bills, developing baselines and using benchmarks were presented. KPPC’s energy use ratio calculator was also upgraded to include water use ratio and was demonstrated during the webinar.

Along with other water management topics, participants learned how to utilize sustainable value stream mapping; an approach of overlaying sustainability data to visualize and identify opportunities for water reduction, improvement in performance and cost savings.

Topics covered in this webinar include:

– Water bills
– Water benchmark and baseline development
– Management and technologies
– Sustainable value stream mapping with water

Find out more and view the Sustainable Water Consumption recorded webinar.

Webinar 3: Lean Approaches for Water Efficiency for Spirits, Brewing and Wine Making
Recorded: October 29, 2020.

This webinar provided training on lean manufacturing principles and practices and show how they can be applied to improve water efficiency. In addition, best practices in water efficiency within distilleries and breweries will be presented. This webinar is a follow-on to the Spring 2020 webinar entitled Sustainable Water Consumption for Spirits, Brewing, and Wine-Making.

Topics covered include:

• Water Use Ratio’s in Kentucky Distilleries and Breweries
• Lean Manufacturing Principles
• Application of lean principles to improve water efficiency
• Examples of best practices in water efficiency

Find out more and view the Lean Approaches for Water Efficiency recorded webinar.