Craft brewing rode a wave of popularity—and great sales—for decades. Impressive annual growth fueled innovations in beer varieties and flavors as well as production processes. And when the beer was flowing, it seemed easy to allocate resources toward corporate values including diversity, sustainability, and community engagement.
Unfortunately, over the last several years a maturing marketing and slowing economy have combined to put craft brewers in tough financial situation. The tap has dried up, and now all brewers must carefully examine every aspect of their business, from operations to marketing to location and everything in between.
Where does that leave sustainability?
As you look for ways to trim expenses and eliminate inefficiencies, it’s easy to view sustainability as inessential initiative that’s easy to cut. But there are many reasons why that’s not in the best interest of your business and long-term success. While eco-friendly business practices may not directly connect to profits, there a multitude of reason to maintain your sustainability efforts.
Green-minded Consumers
We’ve all seen the numbers. Regardless of which study you look at or which research you trust, it all points to one thing: Sustainability factors into the buying decisions of today’s consumers. And it’s not just millennials—many studies show that more than 60% of all respondents consider sustainability when making a purchase.
INTEGRATING SUSTAINABLE VALUES INTO YOUR BUSINESS—BEFORE YOU’VE BEEN REQUIRED TO—GIVES YOU AN EDGE IN TODAY’S GREEN-MINDED MARKETPLACE
Healthier Communities
We’re going to guess that you are tightly integrated within the community that you serve. That’s because it’s not just where your consumers live, it’s frequently where employees live as well Protecting your community’s natural resources is beneficial to everyone involved. Whether it’s reducing energy use, recycling, or more efficiently managing your wastewater, the changes you make can help the entire community thrive.
Circular Systems
Sustainably managing your resources is often leads to efficiencies and cost savings. For example, the more water that goes down the drain, the more new water required to grow crops, craft beer, or wash equipment. Compact, on-site water treatment solutions remove excessive nutrients and pollutants from wastewater, allowing it to meet municipal water system standards and even be repurposed for watering crops. Solids that are sidestreamed can be sold as feed or compost.
Creating a strategic roadmap for sustainability.
Your business isn’t like any other. That’s why it’s critical to analyze your specific challenges, goals, and opportunities when it comes to sustainability. Once you know where you’re going to focus—Recycling? Water? Energy?—you can follow the simple steps below to implement your initiatives in the smartest way.
1. Get a Plan
Talk to a professional to get the right information and figure out the gaps between where you are and where you need to be.
2. Initiate the First Actions
Go for the “low hanging fruit.” You don’t have to completely retool your operations to start making a positive impact. L
3. Implement Major Changes
This is the big step, where you put in the right tool for the right job to achieve your sustainability goals and move forward with eco-friendly business practices that continue driving your success!
4. Don’t Forget Waste Management
Forward-thinking companies are exploring innovative, on-site technologies that don’t just treat waste products like water, but also enhance efficiency, promote reuse, and support the effectiveness of existing infrastructure.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO START BIG—YOU JUST HAVE TO START (OR RESTART IF YOUR SUSTAINABILITY INITIATIVES HAVE BEEN PUT ASIDE)
Key Factors You Should Consider
When looking at solutions, take time to consider what works best for your business. However, there are a few critical factors that apply to most craft breweries.
Compact
Space equals money. Typically, you want a solution that has a small footprint, easily fitting into existing buildings without the need for massive settling ponds or storage tanks. A smaller footprint means minimal disruption to space and workflow.
Affordable
Large-scale sustainability solutions often come with large-scale budgets. Luckily, technology innovations have led to waste treatment solutions that cost in the thousands, not millions. Today, there are a variety of accessible, flexible, and affordable options.
Scalable
Make sure you choose a solution that will grow with you. Scalable systems provide environmentally friendly operations that expand as your business does. Scalability also ensures that the local infrastructure won’t be overwhelmed as you increase volume.
Even with a tighter market, now is not the time to eliminate your sustainability efforts. Instead, lean into affordable eco-friendly business practices that will help you grow success, attract consumers, support your community, and protect our planet.
Check out how our wastewater solutions can help you, whether you’re addressing wastewater for the first time or need to update your existing solution with a larger, more efficient, or more effective system.
Learn more
Obviously, we love our work with breweries, farms, and greenhouses, helping them achieve their sustainability goals, support healthy communities, and grow their businesses. But as a leader in on-site wastewater treatment, we’re always looking for new challenges and new ways to protect our lakes, rivers, and waterways.
The growing population and housing crisis present the next opportunity to put our expertise to work. As housing communities move closer to critical water sources—and further from existing infrastructure—the cost to treat wastewater goes up exponentially and typically the effectiveness goes down.
That’s why we created Waterhorse MBR, a compact and affordable packaged wastewater treatment system. This turn-key solution empowers land developers and municipalities to grow communities—and economies—sustainably while keeping projects on schedule and on budget.
NOT ONLY IS THE TECHNOLOGY PROVEN AND RELIABLE, WATERHORSE MBR CAN BE INSTALLED QUICKLY.
Waterhorse MBR is perfect for subdivisions, trailer park and modular homes, bridge (temporary) homes, remote communities, and resorts as well as ski and golf course communities. The modular system can easily scale, expanding to accommodate future growth. It is easy to operate, with real-time monitoring and remote support to ensure that the system continues running at optimal efficiency and effectiveness.
We’re excited to be building a network of decentralized treatment that enables land developers and municipalities to realize their community and economic growth goals more affordably, more quickly, and more sustainably than traditional infrastructure allows.
– Read our press release here.
– Get more details about Waterhorse MBR here.
To put our decentralized treatment to work for your project, contact Derek Davy at derek@econse.com
We are proud to have been invited to join the Western New York Sustainable Business Roundtable (WNYSBR). This roundtable was created to bring public and private sector organizations together to demonstrate how WNY businesses can take a lead in integrating sustainability into their operations. Along with other innovative industry leaders, we’ll explore how environmentally friendly business practices can positively impact staff, the environment, and the bottom line.
This is an exciting opportunity to add our voice to the conversation and elevate the importance of clean water and water treatment.
Today, the WNYSBR has grown to include more than 70 member organizations. As the roundtable continues to grow, the better equipped we are to view sustainability challenges from all angles—and find the most comprehensive solutions. We use our collective knowledge to explore how businesses can optimize use of energy and materials, reduce waste and pollution, and enhance community investment.
At Econse, we share the WNYSBR vision:
To grow and support an environmentally and economically resilient community that prioritizes the well-being of current and future generations.
We’re looking forward to working together to help businesses and communities in Western New York make a positive impact.
- Learn more about Econse here: https://econse.com/water_stories/
- Learn more about WNYSBR here: https://www.wnysustainablebusiness.org/
For more information, please contact Derek Davy at derek@econse.com
The Hudson Valley has a long-standing reputation for water pollution. The good news is that local businesses are stepping up to the challenge and working hard to operate in more environmentally friendly and sustainable ways.
Round Table Brewery is just one example. This exciting new brewery didn’t wait for strict regulations or customer demand, they simply chose to incorporate sustainable business practices from the beginning. This includes on-site wastewater treatment with the BrüClean System from Econse.
Check out the full story at Brewers Journal.
Using the on-site BrüClean System
We’re excited to be partnering with socially consciously small and mid-size businesses like Round Table Brewery, helping them make an immediate difference. Our innovative on-site treatment solutions empower our clients to protect the environment and serve today’s green-minded customers—for thousands, not millions.
If you want to learn how Econse Water Technologies could work for you, please email Derek Davy at derek@econse.com
Learn more about Round Table Brewery.
Jeff Wilson, an Ontario veterinarian with a passion for bringing people together, has spent his entire, diverse career building networks. Calling on his broad understanding of global issues, he developed the concept of Community Network Integration (CNI) – which is the idea behind the North American Poultry Network.
You can read more about Jeff and the North American Poultry Network here.
Multi-National Effort
This new initiative, with collaborators in both Canada and the US, aims to solve issues in the poultry industry through connectivity. By connecting existing efforts and knitting them together in a way that encourages greater collaboration, Wilson believes the network will be able to effectively solve some of the most pressing challenges faced by the poultry industry, including the rising Avian Influenza epidemic.
Econse is proud to be at the leading edge of this exciting initiative, working with other industry leaders to deliver innovative and integrated solutions. We’ve already begun by installing an Econse Water Purification System utilizing OZOCAV technology at a poultry farm in Ontario. Our proprietary system helps improve water quality by removing metals (iron), eliminating bacteria, and disinfecting water without consumables (ie water softeners).
The initial results are promising. The Econse system reduced previously identified coliforms to a non-detectible level. The system also removed more than 90% of iron in the farm’s well water. Iron content can create multiple problems on a poultry farm, from clogging critical watering components to reducing the effects of disinfection efforts. Recent studies show that iron may help unwanted organisms grow, so reducing iron further supports water disinfection.
Complete data from this installation will be published in December, providing a clear picture of how the system impacts water quality, animal health, and farm operations. This will allow the Econse team and other collaborators to continue refining solutions to deliver the best possible results.
Next Steps
This first farm is a critical pilot project with the North American Poultry Network. Not only is it a fundamental first step in improving animal health in response to the ongoing pandemic, we’re helping the farm grow sustainability and protect one of the planet’s most valuable resources.
Our next step is the addition of our OZOCAV Surface Disinfection System in response to Avian Influenza. This system provides in-situ disinfection of transports, pens, equipment and more, significantly reducing the chance to contract or spread potentially harmful viruses and contaminants. Not only will this help prevent outbreaks, it will determine the best path forward for the future of outbreak response.
Join the Network
The North American Poultry Network is actively seeking producers, processors and researchers in Canada and the USA who may want to join the network.
Anyone interested can reach out directly to:
Jeff Wilson at jbwilson@novometrix.com
Derek Davy at derek@econse.com
Sustainability is no longer a “nice to have” for craft brewing — it’s a necessity for the success of their business. We’re proud to work with brewers like Bench Brewing Company who have embraced sustainable practices not simply to meet regulations, but because it’s the right thing to do for their customers, their community, and the planet.
Check out their featured article in Water Canada, discussing their zero-waste ambitions and how Econse is helping them reach that goal through compact, affordable wastewater treatment solutions.
Exciting news!
Econse Water Technologies and Bench Brewing Company are honored to be nominated as a finalist for the Water Canada Awards in the wastewater category!
We are so grateful for this recognition and proud of our team’s dedication in
revolutionizing on-site wastewater treatment.
Thank you, Water Canada for
providing a platform that celebrates innovation in the water sector.
Congratulations to all the finalists!
IG Alumni, Econse, is creating the next generation of technologies to help solve the world’s most critical water challenges. Derek Davy, CEO, leads this cleantech company that is building waste water treatment solutions for multiple industries to help them reduce their footprint. The technology is helping companies across North America making water stewardship easier.
Read the complete article HERE
ECONSE at the annual Discovery conference in downtown Toronto, BNN’s Kristina Partsinevelos speaks with the co-founder of Brü Clean System, a wastewater treatment system for craft brewers.
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