Sustainable Business Highlight: Maine Beer Company

Sustainable Business Highlight: How Maine Beer Company Does Good Through Great Beer 

Featuring: Zach Dewitt, Community Partnerships Manager & Dave Love, Sustainability Manager

 By Lauren Strohmeier

 In this interview, Zach Dewitt and Dave Love reveal how Maine Beer Company makes a meaningful impact by putting sustainability at the center of its mission. From brewing with carefully sourced ingredients to operating with renewable energy and environmentally responsible practices, the company shows that great beer and environmental stewardship can go hand in hand. By minimizing waste, conserving water, and supporting conservation initiatives, Maine Beer Company actively protects the natural landscapes that inspire its craft. Their commitment proves that businesses can thrive while caring for the planet—creating not only exceptional products, but also a lasting positive impact on the environment and community.   

How does sustainability influence your company’s mission and decision-making?

When Maine Beer Company was first formed in 2009 by brothers David and Daniel Kleban, they established the principle: Do what’s right. That’s been the company’s tagline since the beginning.

One of the right things to do for good beer is to care for the environment. We make sure that our practices are for the planet and the creatures that live on it, including people. That’s the core of our mission.

What long-term sustainability vision guides your company?

We’re constantly trying to improve our sustainability at Maine Beer Company. Dave Love, our first Sustainability Manager, is an essential part of making that goal happen.

 We approach this business in the most ethical and sustainable way possible. That includes making investments in solar and helping our nonprofit partners invest in solar themselves.

 Our ethos consists of helping planet Earth, and the people and creatures that live on it.

 Are you investing in renewable energy or other sustainable technologies?

 Maine Beer Company is invested in solar. Currently, we have enough solar panels on site for about 21% of our total power usage. That may not sound like much, but it’s a massive amount of power.

Because we’ve maxed out capacity for solar on our campus, we’ve invested in solar energy for our nonprofits. That allows us to continue to support renewable energy past the limitations of our campus.

Everything that’s not on site is typically generated through community solar. We invested in Nexamp and have shares in a solar farm in Rumford, Maine.

Our total breakdown equates to 20-21% on-site generation, about 70% community solar, and 10% natural grid. Even if we can’t generate solar power ourselves, we’re going to have the right investments to ensure we’re supporting the renewable energy revolution.

What actions are you taking to reduce your company’s carbon footprint?

 We educate people on sustainable practices and encourage them to live sustainably. We highlight our nonprofit partners on our beer labels. Sierra Club is one of our nonprofit partners.

Additionally, we integrate sustainable practices into our business. For example, we use kegs in the brewery, which are friendlier for the environment than bottled beer. That’s part of the experience for people who consume our beverages. In fact, when I go on the road to pour beer for our nonprofit partners, we use kegs. They are easy to reuse multiple times.

 We also created the Blue Crew in 2020, which is a company club for staff. The goal of the Blue Crew is to ensure we’re consuming in a responsible way and producing sustainably. We also want to have a positive footprint. Because breweries are commonly significant users of water, natural gas, and electricity, any dent we can make in our consumption will make a difference. All these efficiencies add up to achieving this long-term sustainable vision.

When we involve people in our sustainability decisions, they learn how to live more sustainably. It’s a bottom-up approach by design where we’re trying to make everyone leave a Blue Crew meeting or Maine Beer Company event with knowledge they can use to make more sustainable choices.

The Blue Crew brings people together from all departments of the company. It’s cool watching people come up with innovative ideas, such as using reusable cups. That’s a small idea that has a really big impact. The number of resources saved with that idea is significant.

When we bring people together, and everyone has their own ideas to advance the mission, that’s the best part.

 Are your products designed for durability or recyclability?

 Absolutely, our products are designed for durability and/or recyclability. We use mainly kegs and drafts in our business. Specifically, we produce 70% kegs and 30% bottles. Kegs are the most sustainable way to consume beer because they’re almost infinitely reusable if they don’t get damaged.

To ensure every bottle is properly filled, we use incredibly durable materials. Our bottles are rated for reuse in the European Union (EU). They’re thick walled to reduce breakage. We ensure that every drop of beer makes its way to the hands of the customers.

How do you track and report progress toward sustainability goals?

We’ve assisted a number of nonprofits in Maine in the purchase of solar. We follow up with them to ensure the projects are on track. Additionally, we identify how we can help them and raise more funds for them.

We also track all our utility expenditures by department, whether its warehouse, tasting room, or production facility. We then use a bottom-line metric, where we examine per barrel packaged. Ultimately, our metric ensures that every drop of beer goes into the hands of the customers. With that metric as our denominator, everything is calculated against it. 

Additionally, we report to the Brewers Association. They use a sustainability spreadsheet, which gives an understanding of how breweries throughout the U.S. are performing regarding their water, electricity, and natural gas consumptions.

We have an open-door policy when it comes to collaborating with other organizations. We’re transparent about when it takes to produce a barrel of beer. We present and distribute that information and are happy to have conversations about it.

What new technologies or practices are you exploring to improve sustainability? 

We’re constantly evaluating what it will take to achieve the ideal sustainable practice and then take the steps to make it happen.

For example, we capture our fermentation gas as well as compress and liquify it so that CO2 can be reused to carbonate beer. That offsets about 20% of our CO2 consumption, which would otherwise go straight to the atmosphere. We think of it as a reuse and recycling process where we’re giving value to a byproduct.

On top of that, we do small scale water recapture. Specifically, we collect rainwater to water all our indoor plants. Because we have 200 indoor plants, the water recapture saves 1,000 gallons of water over the course of the summer.

We also recapture water to use it for other processes throughout the facility. For example, when we wash the interiors of bottles, we repurpose it to wash other things. That saves another 75,000 gallons of water a year.

If we don’t have the technology to make something as water efficient as possible, we reuse the water.

Regarding what we’re exploring, it’s anything and everything. Whether it’s capturing biogas and using it for the boiler or redesigning our entire HVAC system, we come up with big ideas, fit them into our timeline, and make the ideas work for the business.

How does your company support environmental advocacy or conservation efforts?

Maine Beer Company has been a proud member of 1% for the Planet since our founding in 2009. One percent of our gross annual revenue is donated to environmental nonprofits through our partnership. Additionally, all contributions made above and beyond our final check are donated to nonprofits.

How does your company engage with and give back to your local community?

We tell nonprofits’ stories on our bottles to spread awareness of what they do. There’s a nonprofit featured on almost every beer we offer, so we can get the word out to the community.

On our social media channels, we mainly shine a light on our nonprofit partners.

We also spend a lot of time engaging locally with businesses in Freeport. Our support helps them complete their missions. For example, we highlight them by hosting community pizza nights.

We get together with local nonprofits on almost a weekly basis to engage the community.

What is Maine Beer Company doing differently than other businesses?

Maine Beer Company is a weird company in a good way.

We’ve never launched a typical advertising campaign. The way we promote is by amplifying others’ voices.

We also celebrate small successes. Those successes may seem like a drop in the bucket. However, when we celebrate those drops in the bucket, we build toward greater successes.

Additionally, we involve people in our sustainability efforts. For example, people help with watering our plants, recycling bottle caps, and other tasks. These actions deserve celebration. The people feel good knowing they are contributing to the culture of sustainability.

One of my favorite initiatives is our parking lot cleanups. We encourage employees to pick up litter. Every month or so, we pick up trash. This is a part of our culture.

The Blue Crew also does trash audits, led by Dave Love, to determine whether pieces of trash should be recycled, composted, or potentially reused. I believe our trash audits are unique. We also do a lot of composting.

The goal of the Blue Crew is for participants to learn something new and live more sustainably. We’re doing good by influencing other people’s lifestyle choices. Maine Beer Company is an educational hub, and that’s valuable.