Sustainability at Tipsy Tribe Brewery & Distillery

Today is Earth Day, a day dedicated to reflecting, educating, and exploring ways to protect the environment. Today more than ever, it is important for businesses to take accountability and actively work on reducing their carbon footprint, it’s one of the reasons why I decided to join Tipsy Tribe. When looking for a company for my end-of-studies internship, it was important for me to choose one that placed sustainability as one of their main values. 

Solar panels on the roof of Tipsy Tribe Brewery & Distillery

As a craft brewery and distillery, everything is made in-house, which means every stage of the production is managed by the co-founders, from choosing the ingredients for the beers and spirits to optimizing the deliveries. The goal is to not only produce the best beers and spirits, but to also produce them in a sustainable way. 

Depending on the industries, the sustainable initiatives vary. Before starting my internship in a brewery and distillery, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine all the different ways brewers and distillers could reduce their waste. To give some examples, the by-products from the alcohol distillation process can be used as cleaning agents for the machines in the brewery and distillery, that’s such a small effortless action to implement. The grains used for brewing or distilling are then given to local farmers so they can use it as compost. One of their initiatives that I love the most is the distillation of nearly expired food or even unsellable beer, creating unique spirits out of products that would have been thrown away! 

Since my internship is focusing on marketing, it is interesting to see how marketing strategies can help a company’s sustainable efforts. To motivate the clients to join Tipsy Tribe in our sustainable initiatives, they’re offered discounts on their next order when they bring back their boxes, that way the boxes can be reused, which minimizes packaging waste. 

Also, there are so many eco-friendly labels that exist and that I had never heard of before, I discovered some when looking into Tipsy Tribe. For instance, the Brussels Good Food, which is an initiative promoting a sustainable food system in Brussels. Or the Ecodynamic label, a recognition awarded to companies which are exemplary in their environmental initiatives, and Tipsy Tribe received 3 stars out of 3 (wow!). 

I was able to join in one meeting with Brussels Beer Waste Coop, a group aiming to create synergies and inspire more solutions on how breweries in Brussels like Tipsy Tribe can reduce their beer waste or how they can transform their waste into something new. It was very interesting and inspiring to hear directly from different professionals of this sector how they turn their beer waste into various new products.

Cheers to creating some of the best craft beers and spirits, all this while still caring about the environment!