Our Footprint
Doing our bit to reduce our impact on this beautiful place we call home
We may not be huge leaders in sustainability but we are true believers in ‘every little bit helps’. We are just a small family business and so we do what we can, within our budget to lessen our impact on our local environment.
It is no secret that the brewing process uses a lot of water, but we try to limit our use by recycling the water we use for cooling to use again.
The raw ingredients from the brewing process can create a lot of waste but we try to minimise this also. The malt we use comes in plastic grain sacks which unfortunately are not recyclable but we always get at least one second use out of every sack. It’s amazing how many uses we have come up with for grain sacks over the years (they make good toboggans in winter!) but by far the most popular ones here in Kaikoura are for young kids to collect pine cones to sell as fund raisers, or for fisherman to keep bait in their freezers. Grain sacks can be collected from our tap room any time during opening hours, we have a stack of them there, just come take what you want.
As for the malt itself, this is a waste product that also gets handed out to the community. Mostly, it feeds a few local cows and goats, but even some keen humans! (In the form of really tasty bread and crackers)
We also opt for re-use when it comes to packaging our products for delivery, hence why you’ll notice an array of packaging materials inside our boxes, it’s just whatever we’ve collected from packages that we’ve received from other companies.
We also use paper labels on our beer bottles. That is a conscious choice by us to limit the amount of single use plastic we are putting out into the world. Yes, paper is more expensive and yes it does start to come off when it gets wet in your chilly bin but using paper labels makes the recycling of glass bottles more viable.
But of course the best way to sell our beer is directly from the tap so we encourage people to fill a re-usable rigger instead of buying bottles, it’s cheaper that way too!