Environmental impact assessment and carbon audit for Purity Brewery
In February 2020 the Clean Earth Collective undertook a carbon audit for Purity Brewers. This involved an onsite visit of the brewery, giving insight into their brewing operations and environmental strategies already in place. We started with a tour of their heat exchange and steam recapture system, diverting heat to be used further down the brewing process, and their state of the art steam capture technology that gives them one of the best water to beer ratios in the industry.
We then focused on waste management, learning how all the spent grain is supplied locally to Longhorn Cattle on the farm, with the spent yeast going to the pigs and the used hops utilised as an effective natural fertiliser, replacing the need for synthetic fertiliser that has a much higher footprint due to its production process.
Many breweries situated in towns and cities have to divert all excess water into the sewage system, whereas at Purity, a scenic part of the tour was to visit their natural wetland system, a series of constructed waterbeds and lake, planted with reeds and trees, including Willow, Hazel, Hawthorn and Blackthorn. A clear wildlife oasis amongst a predominately agricultural setting.
We also inspected their onsite canning process, a productive operation with very measurable savings on carbon emissions. We then focused on their unavoidable emissions and categorising their responsibilities regarding Scope 3 emissions by identifying a boundary of their upstream and downstream operations.
A decisions was made to include the transport of raw materials to the brewery, the embodied carbon emissions associated with packaging, and to shoulder the responsibility of the transport emissions to their retailers and clients, accumulating in an in depth carbon report of their entire operations.
The report was for the operating period 2019 – 2020.
Purity Brewing – https://www.puritybrewing.com
