by Caroline Gabsewics
Staff Writer
One would never think a brewery would be so committed to the environment, but the Anheuser-Busch company is more than just 12 types of beer available on draft, in a can or in a bottle. Since the late 1800s, the company has been dedicated to conserving natural resources and recycling its waste products.
Anheuser-Busch is committed to helping the environment company-wide, but last year the Jacksonville Anheuser-Busch brewery won two environmental awards from JEA and they hope to repeat that performance again this year.
“We are always looking for ways to improve our performance,” said Sylvester Robinson, plant manager of Anheuser-Busch’s Jacksonville Brewery.
The first award was the “JEA Industrial Pretreatment Platinum Award” for significant industrial wastewater discharge and outstanding environmental performance, he said.
The second award was the “JEA Environmental Stewardship Award” for achieving 100 percent environmental compliance in industrial pretreatment.
“Speaking as the plant manager, it (the awards) makes me feel very proud,” he said. “It demonstrates our commitment to the environment.”
There are eight Anheuser-Busch breweries out of the 12 nationally that use Bio-Energy Recovery Systems (BERS) — a wastewater treatment system that reduces the organic load in wastewater and captures the bio-gas, a renewable energy resource, before the wastewater is discharged into the local wastewater system, said Robinson.
“This process places a smaller demand on the wastewater system and it cuts down on the overall electrical requirements placed on the brewery,” said Robinson.
The bio-gas the system produces is a renewable energy resource that offsets boiler fuel purchases and, in turn, reduces the breweries’ need for fossil fuels.
Anheuser-Busch is the world’s largest operator of BERS. The system was installed in the Jacksonville brewery in 1991 and has been in operation for 15 years.
Robinson explained some of the benefits of using BERS.
“The bio-gas offsets 17 percent of the bio-fuel used in the boiler system,” he said. “It helps the city because they don’t have to work as hard to clean the wastewater because this removes 90 percent of the nutrients.
“In all, it is an advantage to us and the city in their water treatment facilities.”
Another of the company’s environmental initiatives is its nutri-turf system that’s been in use since 1978.
Robinson said the byproducts found in the wastewater are rich in nitrogen and a valuable source of nutrients.
“We have applied 720 million gallons of these nutrients at our nutri-turf land application sites,” he said. “It is an environmentally sound method of growing grain crops and it is used as livestock feed.”
The Jacksonville brewery has two nutri-turf sites. One is on Main Street, located a half-mile from the brewery. The other is on Lem Turner Road. The Main Street site is 800 acres and is primarily used for growing sod and other crops. The Lem Turner site is much bigger at 1,700 acres.
“They are pretty sizable areas of landscape,” said Robinson.
The nutrients are piped from the brewery to these two sites. In 2006 the Jacksonville brewery shipped 166,000 tons of spent grain to farmers around Jacksonville for cattle feed.
“We are able to use wastewater from the brewery in a productive matter,” said Robinson. “Environmentally we are doing a good thing by growing crops.”
Besides Anheuser-Busch’s BERS and nutri-turf systems, the company is also one of the world’s largest recyclers of aluminum cans.
The company has recycled 99.5 percent of its waste generated since 1996, said Robinson. The waste includes plastics, aluminum, gas, stretch wrap, office products and metals.
“In 2006, the Jacksonville brewery recycled 419 million pounds of waste materials including everything from aluminum to scrap metal to culet (broken waste glass),” he said. “The brewery is continuing to look for ways to improve our recycling.”
According to Anheuser-Busch’s Web site, the company has been committed to the environment since the late 1800s.
“We’ve always had the goal to be environmentally friendly,” said Robinson. “It is a part of our values — quality, safety and the environment.
“We are always looking for ways to be more environmentally correct.”