Taking Stock of Molson Coors' Beerprint

Original interview: Nature of Business radio, created and hosted by Chrissy Coughlin, is a weekly show on business and environment.

Environment, water, community, responsibility, and beer. What could be better?   Bart Alexander, Chief of Corporate Responsibility at Molson Coors agrees, and we had a great conversation about all of the above and much more including his work as coach, influencer, and communicator. For a company where 9 out of 10 employees believe that Molson Coors is doing a good job when it comes to sustainability, something is certainly working. Clearly this has to do with Bart's work ... and certainly the ever-mighty "beerprint."   It is indeed an unfortunate reality that sustainability tends to isolate the masses. Sure, it can be complex. And I consistently argue that not only does it not have to be, it really can't be if we are going to engage a wider audience and make serious progress. At the 3-minute mark, I was all smiles as I listened to Bart.   As he states, "Sustainability ... we went about it the way that many companies do which is to put together a sophisticated plan summarizing all of the good work we were doing and setting goals and objectives. We found that was really helpful in terms of those of us in field managing details of our sustainability agenda. But when we tried to explain it to our own people and to our customers and our consumers, we found that people just glazed over."   Now enter the beerprint. (Stage right or left)   He explains, "So we came up with a new way of talking about sustainability that we call our beerprint. Every time you pick up a beer and put it down you leave and little mark on the coaster or on the table, and that's a beerprint. And just like that our company puts a mark on communities where we work, our people, and on the earth ... our agenda is to grow our positive beerprint -- the good things that result from our business -- the sociability and joy we bring to a lot people in making our product, economic impacts we have on communities where we do business, the positive contributions we have in our communities. We want to grow our positive beerprint and shrink our negative beerprint. We want to shrink things like accidents for our people, pollution, and alcohol abuse."   I like it. Simple, visual and engaging.   I really appreciate how Molson-Coors sticks specifically to projects directly related to their business. Water, for instance. One example is Every Drop Every Ripple. It's about thinking about every drop you use and every ripple you leave both at work and in your personal lives. They expect millions upon millions of water to be saved. And millions already have been. It's interactive and cool.

Continue reading the original article on GreenBiz.com.

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