Molson Coors Ups Its Sustainability Game in 2024

April 22^nd was Earth Day, and Molson Coors, the second biggest brewer in the US, took the opportunity to highlight its ongoing earth-friendly moves.

Here’s the deal…

Darin McKnight, senior manager of corporate sustainability, spends a lot of time thinking about the future of Molson Coors. That also allows him to understand the challenges of implementing sustainable practices in a complex global business.

“We have many initiatives underway to address our people and planet goals,” McKnight told Beer & Beyond. “We’ve done a lot, including improving water usage, sourcing renewable electricity, increasing the recycled content of packaging and decreasing the weight, and therefore amount of material, of packaging.”

Across the world, Molson Coors has been upping its sustainability game bigtime, from reducing its emissions to greening up its packaging and more.

In Canada, the company has added several electric trucks to its distribution fleet. And in the Americas, it’s replaced plastic bottles with glass. Overall, more than 99.6% of Molson Coors’ packaging is reusable or recyclable.

But that’s not all…

Molson Coors’ multi-hundred-million-dollar modernization of its Golden, Colo., brewery will make a huge sustainability impact, lowering energy usage and water consumption.

The overhaul of Molson Coors’ largest brewing facility in North America, includes the installation of new aging and fermenting tanks and state-of-the-art filtration facilities. The new brewery is expected to save millions of gallons of water per year and should substantially reduce energy usage, potentially by up to 30%.

The upgrade which is on track to be completed by this summer, will make the Golden, Colorado facility that produces about a quarter of the company’s beer in the US, one of the most efficient breweries in the world.

“It’s the biggest project we’ve had in Golden in 50 years,” said Peter Coors, director of the G150 project. “But it’s aimed at preparing us to be successful for the next 50 years and beyond.”

In March, Molson Coors made an important step in its goal to source renewable electricity for its brewery in Wisconsin

. It became the first company to sign up for We Energies’ Renewable Pathway program. Combined with a smaller renewable electricity agreement for the Leinenkugel’s Chippewa Falls brewery, the company now has renewable electricity agreements in place to cover nearly 100% of all operations in Wisconsin.

Molson Coors is also continuing to phase out single-use plastic rings from all its packaging in the US. Instead of plastic, Molson Coors is moving to sustainably sourced, recyclable fiberboard-wrapped packages for four- and six-packs.

“Our goals help guide our efforts to advance our people and planet initiatives to create a world to celebrate, Darin McKnight added.

And Molson Coor’s admirable sustainability efforts are worth noting on Earth Day 2024.