Ecolab Hosts Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable
Industry Leaders Unite to Share Best Practices, Advance Environmental Sustainability of Sector
St. Paul, Minn., October 21, 2014 /3BL Media/ – Beverage industry leaders from across the globe convened October 14-16 for the Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable (BIER) semi-annual meeting. Ecolab hosted the event at the company’s Global Research, Development and Engineering (RD&E) Center on its Schuman Campus in Eagan, Minn. The three-day agenda focused on BIER’s current work to reduce resource consumption, mitigate environmental impacts and ensure sustainable growth of the beverage sector.
“We welcomed the opportunity to host our colleagues from the world’s leading beverage companies,” said Jill Wyant, Ecolab executive vice president and president, Global Food & Beverage. “Through BIER, the global beverage industry shares best practices that advance sustainability initiatives and further improve the environmental footprints of all its members.”
Meeting topics included discussions around sector-specific energy management guidance, ecosystem services principles, water stewardship through performance in context, emerging product environmental footprint category rules and best practices in sustainability reporting. Additionally, representatives from World Resources Institute, The Nature Conservancy and CERES attended, providing key stakeholder perspectives to working group sessions. Meeting attendees also received a tour of Ecolab’s state-of-the-art RD&E facility, where they learned about the latest Ecolab research and innovations in food safety and water management for the food and beverage industry.
Through the collective experience and knowledge of its membership, BIER collaborates to define the environmental sustainability aspects most relevant to the beverage sector. By doing so, BIER is able to monitor data and trends, engage with key stakeholders, develop best practices and guide a course of action for the future. Current BIER initiatives include defining context-based metrics for water use, developing energy assessment tools to help prioritize and mitigate climate change impacts, and establishing guiding principles around ecosystem dependencies and biodiversity conservation measures across the beverage product value chain.
About BIER
The Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable (BIER) is a technical coalition of leading global beverage companies working together to advance environmental sustainability within the beverage sector. By accelerating the process of analysis to sustainable solutions, BIER aims to affect sector change through work focused on water stewardship, energy efficiency and climate change. BIER members include American Beverage Association, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Bacardi, Beam, Brown-Forman, Carlsberg, The Coca-Cola Company, Constellation Brands, Danone Waters, Diageo, Ecolab, Fetzer Vinyards, Heineken, MillerCoors, MolsonCoors, New Belgium Brewing Company, Ocean Spray Cranberries, PepsiCo, Pernod Ricard, SABMiller, Sealed Air and Sun Orchard. For more information, visit www.bieroundtable.com.
About Ecolab
A trusted partner at more than one million customer locations, Ecolab (ECL) is the global leader in water, hygiene and energy technologies and services that protect people and vital resources. With 2013 sales of $13 billion and 45,000 associates, Ecolab delivers comprehensive solutions and on-site service to promote safe food, maintain clean environments, optimize water and energy use and improve operational efficiencies for customers in the food, healthcare, energy, hospitality and industrial markets in more than 170 countries around the world. For more Ecolab news and information, visit www.ecolab.com.
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MEDIA CONTACT
Tod Christenson Antea Group
Director, BIER 5910 Rice Creek Parkway
+1 612 850 8609 St. Paul, MN 55126
tod.christenson@anteagroup.com
