Sarah Fraser

Partial Transcript: My name is Sarah Fraser, and I work here at New Belgium Brewing. I work in sustainability and about me, I grew up with a couple of teachers as parents and so summers often meant that we were camping and fishing and hiking and spending most of that time outside so I think from a young age I grew to have a huge appreciation for the natural world and all the critters and plants that we share this planet with.

Partial Transcript: I think my interest in New Belgium really aside from the great beer is the strong focus on being good stewards of the environment And just the word thoughtfulness comes to mind with this company you know the time that was spent in taking care of this property the time that was spend in selecting this property even. This company got started out in Fort Collins. Colorado back in 1991. We reached a point where we realized we’d outgrown our capacity at that brewery and needed to build another one, and we took several years looking all over the country and created a whole list of selection criteria and
New Belgium was founded back in 1991 in a couple’s basement out in Fort Collins Colorado and over a number of years we grew to the point that We outgrew the capacity I should back up and say that we outgrew the basement actually launched this thing as a legitimate business and purchased an old what was it? an old railroad depot and converted that into the brewery space and outgrew that and moved into what is our current brewery out in Fort Collins and I forget the year but somewhere around 2009 I would say we realized we needed, you know, we were outgrowing that brewery’s capacity and needed to create a new one. There were a team of my co-workers that developed a list of criteria for selecting a location and a property for the second brewery I think there was something like thirty-three different criteria on that list. One of those of course was water, you know water is the largest ingredient in beer by volume over 90% of a beer and of course we are not sourcing water from the French Broad River but this area of western North Carolina has very clean water and another piece that I found really interesting of that selection criteria we were looking for a brown field site or something we could really redevelop and put back into productive use in the community and after a long search we found this site here in Asheville a former brown field right here in the heart of the city. It needed a lot of work and a lot of love and I think it was really, you know I use the word thoughtful earlier and I would say it was pretty thoughtful in the selection of the property and all the site design and the restoration that went into it prior to even getting started on laying the foundation for the buildings.

Partial Transcript: I think a couple of things are really interesting about the selection of this site as a brown field one just the location in Asheville means that folks like me that work here can walk or ride a bike take a bus to work instead of being one more car on the road. It also means that visitors to downtown Asheville if you want to stop by and take a tour with us or come drink beer can easily get here They could even walk or take the bus and folks that live and work in Asheville and are here in the neighborhood can stop by on the way home and pick up a six pack or just meet a friend over a beer, So it is really having that you know that central location is really neat but I think another really interesting wonderful thing about redeveloping a brownfield is that it takes this piece of property and I’ve lived in Asheville for 13-14 years now and can remember driving by this site just you know overgrown and abandoned it seemed fenced off and you know we’ve taken that piece of land and cleaned up this contaminated soil and put it back into you know a productive use in the community and it has now become something of a community gathering spot, you know it’s a place where families come by and birthdays happen and are celebrated and friends meet and celebrate things over a beer so it has been really wonderful to see. Another really great thing has been the restoration of the creek that passes through and bisects this property. It was a key piece of the site for us kind of divides the side where the brewery is located verses the tasting room and so having that stable and intact it is also something of a focal point of our campus rather than this giant insize ditch filled with concrete and washing machines has been a really great transformation. We like to think that it’s providing a small amount of habitat for all the other members of our community, the birds and the wildlife and insects that share the space with us here right on the French Broad.

Partial Transcript: So our commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship really starts day one with Kim and Jack I think environment stewardship and the commitment to sustainability really starts at the very beginning in our company’s history. Company was founded by a social worker and an electrical engineer and they really got started while continuing those day jobs and started this thing in the basement of their home out in Colorado and before Kim and Jack really decided to launch this as a business they were very intentional about what they wanted to create. They took a long hike together in Rocky Mt. National Park and penned a paper at that point and established four core values and beliefs for the company and one of those was environmental stewardship so it was really clipped into our DNA from the very get-go that this was something we cared about was our use of natural resources and our impact on the planet and on the community. And I also think that just as brewers you know New Belgium is probably not alone here but as brewers we are really connected to water. I think I mentioned before that it is the largest ingredient in beer by volume and so we rely on healthy water sheds to feed the locations where our breweries are and that means you know, healthy and free flowing rivers that provide the clean water. It’s also an agricultural product if you think about it two of the other primary ingredients are hops and malt which comes from barley and so we need healthy soils and active and heathy farming systems to help make our beer. I think we just have a connection to the land and to nature that maybe isn’t present in every other business.

Partial Transcript: So some of the ways we have been good stewards of water I would say here at our Asheville brewery is aside from redeveloping a brownfield part of what went into that was the site design and taking a really close look at how we might have an impact on storm water and on the French Broad that we sit right here next to so we incorporated a whole storm water design that really meshed the human systems with the natural systems and create a series of storm water treatment areas that really are out in the open instead of being piped and underground they are visible and are elements that, you know, our guests may or may not know this as they are coming into this taste a beer, but they are treating storm water in a way where it’s cleaning it gradually as it’s moving through the property through sort of a chain of treatments – various swells and rain gardens and constructive wet lands and biotention areas before any of that water makes its way to Penland Creek and then onto the French Broad and much of the water is coming from outside of our property It’s flowing this direction towards the river.
It’s just a really thoughtful design from the beginning trying to really to be good stewards of water. When it comes to our operations we set some aggressive goals for water reduction or water use ratio at the brewery as well as energy use and waste that we generate.
So when it comes to our operations we’ve set some pretty aggressive goals for water use and energy reduction and waste and greenhouse gas emissions So we started with designing a brewery that is in and a liquid distribution center that are all lead certified. So we are incorporating state of the art technology and design that allows in a lot of natural light and makes use of efficient technology and systems that prevent it from really consuming a lot of energy in the first place or water so we have a very efficient systems and modern technology in our brewing system but aside from that another one of our core values and beliefs is just continuous innovative efficiency improvements. We are always looking at ways we can do better- ways we can do things more efficiently and of course in the process save water and save energy.
We have a team of folks that meet monthly from every different department that look at our electrical use and our water usage in our operations. We have a pretty deep level of sight into that energy and water usage because we have meters that are placed throughout the building so we can see how much energy and water the bottling line uses verses the cellar for example so we are looking at that on a monthly basis and brain storming and looking at projects that we can implement that will help us conserve and reduce our resource usage

Partial Transcript: New Belgium has a 99% waste diversion rate currently if you look at that volume of waste the largest amount by far is our spent grain. I think it is probably 98% of our waste. Our spent grain, we worked with an organization here to create the Western NC Grain Alliance and so we sent all of that spent grain to livestock farmers throughout western NC so they’re getting that at a very cheap or reduced rate and it saves us from having to send it to the landfill so it is a win-win for everybody. That last I mention is about 98% of our waste by volume. The last 2% is all the other stuff and that is really the measure of the effort so we implemented a lot of recycling stations throughout both the operational side of the brewery as well as the office spaces and our guest spaces here at the tasting room. We compost and recycle but we are also very thoughtful about the materials that we are bringing in. We take a close look at our suppliers and our vendors to make sure that they have good practices and they are minimizing the waste and the packaging that they are sending things to us.

Partial Transcript: We participate in a water quality network called V- win I forget the acronym for that- Volunteer Water Information Network, I believe, so I take water samples from Penland Creek at two locations monthly and submit those to a lab for analysis so we are looking at how water quality is changing on a monthly basis and also how it compares to other streams around western North Carolina. We’ve also partnered with, we work closely with River Links, of course they were instrumental in helping us complete the restoration on Penland Creek They along with the city of Asheville helped us get a grant from the state through the North Carolina Clean Water Management Trust Fund so they’ve been an outstanding partner for us since we’ve been in Asheville.
In working with River Links we’ve also been connected with some local professors, We’ve worked with a hydrologist at University of North Carolina Asheville who’s taken a look at some of our water samples for further analysis and we’ve also right now got a class of students from Warren Wilson College that’s also looking at water and coming out on a regular basis this semester to analyze the water quality in Penland Creek. We have one of the most urban water sheds in Asheville as I understand it, Penland Creek has about 150 acre water shed and it’s mostly the West Asheville area so if you think about it there’s a lot of residences, a lot of businesses, of course Haywood road, a lot of imperious surface there that leads to a very flashy regime in the creek So when it rains the water comes up really fast and it’s gushing down the creek and then during dry spells it may not really run at all and you’ll have kind of dry or just stagnant pools so it’s an interesting system. I hope that we will learn a lot – I’m sure we will learn a lot from these students and from these professors that we are working with right now. Aside from that, the New Belgium has a pretty strong philosophy when it comes to philanthropy and so we donate a dollar per barrel of beer that we produce and that money is allocated for a grant program So we give grants in five different areas, one of those being water restoration and conservation and so we’ve worked with organizations who apply to us and we’ve worked with them around the country we now sell beer in all 50 states so folks from organizations in every state can apply to us for those grants. Locally in Asheville we just recently last week we celebrated the 50th anniversary of The Wild and Scenic Rivers Legislation in our country and so we had a big event celebrating that with American Rivers and American White Water and Mountain True here on site. It was open to the public we had hundreds of people here on the event lawn and in the tasting room enjoying live music signing postcard and taking action on behalf of rivers really everywhere and also telling some of their favorite river stories. It was a lot of fun. Trying to think what else to mention. Those are some of the big ones that come to mind.

Partial Transcript: It’s important for us to be good stewards of the river because rivers and water are so important water is so important to all of us on the planet as big users of water in our business of course it’s critical, you know, to our business continuing to thrive to insure that rivers and water everywhere are honored and respected and well cared for. And personally, I guess I have just spent so much time fishing and swimming and boating on the rivers that to me it is just the most natural thing in the world. How could you not care for and, you know, be a good steward of these beautiful streams? I didn’t phrase that very well.

Partial Transcript: I think it’s really important to remember the heroes that have worked on the French Broad and in our water shed and really anywhere that have come before us because they are really the ones that are responsible for the water quality the good water quality we enjoy in our area and they are a good reminder to always stay vigilant and aware. We have challenges in the watershed now and we will always have challenges and it’s good to remember their work and their respect for these waterways and that ( I am struggling to formulate my thoughts the noise is starting to distract me) I think we should all be grateful to the folks who have come before us protecting water quality and improving water quality in our watershed and on the French Broad and it’s a good reminder to always stay vigilant and aware of the challenges that we are facing now and the challenges that are coming down the road and to just keep in mind it is a dynamic system in our society our riverbanks are changing with the pace of development and with the changes that we are seeing in our climate. We always have to keep in mind the natural areas and systems around us and our impact on those.

Partial Transcript: I should have mentioned maybe our partnership and the movie can I go back and just talk about that a little bit? Another partnership we had here locally was with the Center for Cultural Preservation and we had a really fun event here where we showed the film “The Great Flood” here in the Brew house on our system and had over a hundred people that came out to watch this as a fund raiser for this film we are filming right now. It was really a great celebration of rivers and a great way that we can support by donating our space for the community and selling beers and getting people out and remembering that epic flood that effected our whole watershed her in North Carolina.