Drake’s Brewing is thrilled to share that we received the Environmental Leadership Award for Excellence in Waste Prevention and Reuse from StopWaste this year! We are proud of this recognition and wanted to share a bit about how we got here.
At Drake’s, we’re always looking for ways to make our brewery and retail locations more sustainable. A big change we made was switching to reusable plastic pallets, pallet wraps, and rubber pallet bands for transporting packaging. This change has cut out 16,000 pounds of wood pallet waste and 290,000 square feet of disposable plastic wrap every year. That’s enough plastic to cover over five football fields! Plus, it’s made loading time faster, simpler, and safer for our crew. Chris Vanderpool, Drake’s Raw Materials Handler, says “Making these important changes has not only made us more sustainable but has made our jobs much easier in regards to having dedicated, in-house tools and processes for moving and storing materials.”
But we didn’t stop there. We’ve been working hard to reduce our environmental footprint in other ways. We’re using water more efficiently in our brewery and we’ve put up custom signs to help our employees and taproom guests sort their trash properly. Sustainability is at the heart of what we do and we are always trying to find better choices to be kinder to our planet. We love sharing our tips and tricks with others in the industry to help spread the green love.
Our Head of Sustainability, Hal McConnellogue, discusses how “Implementing these practices have been a game changer for our production and warehouse teams. Making the investment into resources for the betterment of our employees and future has been one of the easiest and most rewarding decisions we could have made to reduce waste. We’re grateful for the recognition and support StopWaste offers to individuals and businesses alike in our community.”
A huge shoutout and thank you to StopWaste and Gigantic Idea Studio for their ongoing support and for always pushing for better and safer standards in our community. This award has fired us up to keep making a difference and brewing a greener future.
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