New Belgium Tops You Off with 50% Recycled Cups

Colorado-based New Belgium Brewery will be the first customer using a new clear cold beverage cup made from recycled PET bottles.

The cups are made by Eco-Products, one of the nation's biggest brands for single-use food service products made from renewable and recycled resources.

New Belgium, and early adopter of the compostable cup, has been an Eco-Products customer since 2005. Like their other customers, New Belgium must use conventional plastic when waste diversion through composting is not available. But sustainability often requires many solutions and the brewery plans to use these new cups in those areas.

“Using recycled content cups from Eco-Products will allow us to cut our use of virgin plastic, specific to festival cups, in half,” said Bryan Simpson, director of media relations at New Belgium Brewery. “Sustainability challenges often require more than one solution, and we look forward to putting these new cups to use where the collection of our compostable cups is not available. This is an important part of our ongoing effort to limit the environmental impact of our operations and events,” Simpson said.

The new cups are offered in 9-, 12-, 16-, 20- and 24-ounce sizes and are available nationwide.

"What we are finding is that our customers need multiple options when it comes to reaching their sustainability goals for food service," said Bob King, CEO of Eco-Products. "The launch of this new cup is another step toward our goal of offering complete solutions in the form of products made from both renewable resources, as well as recycled content," King explained.

This is just one of many green initiatives from the brewery. After discovering that just one six-pack of Fat Tire emits nearly 3,200 grams of CO2 they began working to reduce that number by 25-percent per barrel. They also take 4 gallons of water to make just 1 gallon of beer, which is 20 percent less than the industry average (5 gallons of water per 1 gallon of beer). And in 2007, New Belgium recycled 73 percent of its waste (812,000 pounds) and put 295,000 pounds of waste into landfills.

I'll drink to that.

Greenopolis.com is dedicated to our users. We focus our attention on changing the world through recycling, waste-to-energy and conservation. We reward our users for their sustainable behaviors on our website, through our Greenopolis Tracking Stations and with curbside recycling programs.

GREENOP4983