Aug 20, 2019
Julia Person is the Corporate Sustainability Manager with Craft Brew Alliance, headquartered in Portland, Oregon and a leader in brewing, branding and bringing to market world class American craft beers such as from Widmer Brothers Brewing and Kona Brewing Co.
Julia Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:
- Craft Brew Alliance's recent sustainability report and incorporating SASB framework into their reporting process
- CBA's work to understand GHG emissions in product packaging
- Sustainable design of the new Kona Brewing Company brewery
- Managing sustainability messaging throughout multiple different brands
- Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders
Julia's Final Five Question Responses:
What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?
What I learned early on in my career, which is more relevant today even than ever, is that sustainability is a business necessity for all different types of businesses. It's just the state of the world right now. So, if you really understand the business case of sustainability and how it really can work hand in hand with business to making you more competitive, more profitable, and it's not an extra cost to the business, then I think that really would help someone out in their career to affect change and really align with those business needs.
What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?
I think we're seeing that the technology is really out there. It's really caught up with what we want to do. So, it's a matter of really scaling that up and making it happen. I mentioned our water recovery and it's incredible to me that we're able to make our own clean water as a business that's cleaner than water we're being delivered. It's actually clean enough for us to make beer out of. I don't think we're there yet as a society, but I think we will be one day soon and I'm excited to see that.
What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read?
The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan. It's about the dust bowl so it's looking back, but that was one of the biggest human caused environmental disasters of recent times. So, I feel like we have a lot to learn from those historical events when we're facing current challenges.
What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?
In our industry, we have the trade group called the Brewers Association and they have some incredible tools around sustainability. They have manuals around water and energy. A really valuable tool is they're benchmarking efforts where they're collecting data from breweries across the country of all different sizes around our energy and water use and CO2. It's valuable to be able to benchmark and see what's best in class and where's the gap. I really find that one of the most valuable tools out there.
Where can people go to learn more about you and the workup CBA?
The best place to go is craftbrew.com. You can click over to our About section to find our new sustainability report. It's interactive as well. So, as you're reading through that, you can click on links and find videos that pop up and so forth. So, hopefully some of you folks can check that out.
About Sustridge
Sustridge is a sustainability consulting firm providing consulting in sustainability strategy development, GHG emissions calculating and management, zero waste planning and guidance in TRUE Zero Waste, B Corp, LEED and Carbon Neutral certification.