BEER THE CHANGE: SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability Reports

We've been publishing Beer The Change® each year we've been open. This report highlights our progress towards our goals. See our growth, challenges, and opportunities made real over the years.
These reports are in PDF format:

Carbon Footprint Info

SUSTAINABILITY

Being a sustainable company for Vivant Brewery + Spirits means considering the impact of our decisions on People, Planet, & Profit. We became a certified B Corporation in 2014. B Corps are for-profit companies certified by the nonprofit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. This is an international certification similar to LEED for buildings or Fair Trade for coffees, but it looks at the whole business, not just one piece.

 

LEED - Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
Vivant Brewery + Spirits was awarded the first ever LEED certification (LEED Silver) for a production brewery in the United States in 2012. The U.S. Green Building Council is the certifying party that is changing the way we think about how buildings and communities are planned, constructed, maintained and operated. LEED-certified buildings are resource efficient. They use less water and energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Efficiencies also save money. This initiative is directly in line with our Triple Bottom Line. Intrigued? There's more about our buildings below...

The pub is housed in a funeral home chapel built in 1947 and the production facility was built in 1924 as a Chrysler/Plymouth dealership. The property was originally a lumberyard in the early 1900's.

As the first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) commercial microbrewery in the world, we have incorporated many things to help us reduce, reuse and recycle.

  • High efficiency heating/cooling units with CO2 sensors that resulted in an energy savings of 7% over ASHRAE 90.1-2007 (LEED Energy and Atmosphere Prerequisite 2: Minimum Energy Performance)
  • Our existing glycol cooling system for our beer tanks were up-sized slightly so it could also cool the cooler our draft beer comes from.
  • All of our rainwater runoff is recaptured in a giant cistern and slowly released into the ground to reduce the pressure on our city’s wastewater treatment plant.
  • We also use no potable water to irrigate all of our landscaping around the building and within the beer garden (LEED Water Efficiency Credit 1: Water Efficient Landscaping)
  • Instead of expending extra resources on tile, carpet or paint, we chose to polish our existing concrete floors in the pub. Not only did this save us money but also gave us a really cool look.
  • Our toilets and urinals are all low flow, resulting in a yearly water savings of nearly 50,000 gallons of potable water (LEED Water Efficiency Prerequisite 1: Water Use Reduction)
  • The sinks in our bathrooms use sensors to turn on and off to reduce water use.
leed2

GOALS
Being transparent about our goals and outcomes is a way we can stay accountable to you, our customer. By doing so, we also hope to inspire others to consider their impact on the world around them, and hopefully use their time on this Earth to be a force for good. "Be the change you wish to see in the world," Ghandi says. We say BEER the change! We report on our goals each March (on St Patrick's Day, it's our version of Green Beer). We haven't met all of our goals but we continue to work towards them.

75%

expenses within Michigan

50%

food inputs grown within Michigan

25%

beer inputs grown within Michigan

1%

of sales to our local non-profit partners

TBD

employee volunteer hours

0

safety incidents

Zero

waste / landfill diversion

3:1

water to beer ratio

10%

onsite renewable electricity

25%

energy intensity reduction in 10 years (baseline is 2020)

50%

greenhouse gas emissions reduction in 10 years (baseline is 2020)

COMMUNITY

We believe that a great business exists because of the support of the local community. Therefore, a business should be an active extension of the community and should strive to find meaningful ways to give back.

We work to positively impact our community through a number of ways. At the pub, we have community tables in our beer garden. Our hope is that people sitting there will meet their neighbors and engage in lively conversation, and through doing so, our community.

We chose to locate our business in a neighborhood as opposed to a commercial district. We like the idea that people can walk or bike to our place from their home. We also like that we found a dilapidated building that was once an eyesore and we brought it back to life to become a viable part of the neighborhood.

We have a goal to donate 1% of sales to our local charity partners. This allows us to strategically cultivate relationships in the community and keep the money flowing circular, enriching us all.