Sustainability at Beerwulf

At Beerwulf, we are passionate about bringing you great beer straight to your door, but we want to be environmentally conscious while doing so. Becoming more sustainable is a huge challenge, and that’s why we want to get this topic on our radar early.

We want to start thinking about eco-friendly solutions and putting together a timeline of concrete targets as we grow. But we know that this topic isn’t just important to us, it’s also important to you - and that’s why we want to share our journey with you, so you can see how we’re learning and improving. We know we’re not perfect yet, but by being transparent and open, we plan on staying motivated and taking meaningful actions.

Our vision is to become a low-impact option for ordering online and experiencing beer at home.  

The Challenge

As an e-commerce business, we face many environmental challenges. These include our current linear economy (making a product, the products being used, the products being binned), our greenhouse gas emissions, the waste produced throughout our supply chain etc.  

We will be taking on these challenges from two directions: 

1. Increasing circularity. We need to work towards making our products circular to stop the usual linear pattern, and keeping that product out of landfill. This can be done through recycling, refurbishing and repairing products.  
2. Reducing emissions, especially from transportation.  

It is important to note that we rely a lot on third parties when addressing these challenges, as we outsource many of our operations. This means that we are not solely in control of all the choices being made and must work together with external actors and encourage less environmentally damaging choices throughout our entire supply chain. 

Read about our Steps to Sustainability below to see what actions we have taken, are going to take soon, and hope to take, to address these challenges.

We will provide updates on our progress every 6 months, so stay tuned for more information soon!

Steps to Sustainability

Creating a Sustainability Roadmap

To tackle emissions head-on, we need data. That’s why we are working with ClimatePartner to calculate our baseline carbon footprint. This partnership makes sure that all emission data we communicate is credible and accurate. Once we have a baseline, we can figure out where best to reduce emissions to maximise positive outcomes and set time-bound, realistic reduction targets.

Increasing Circularity

Plastic Kegs

Our kegs are currently made of PET plastic. To recycle them, please check the options of your local waste management and find out about collection services and recycling options as this differs per country and region. Inappropriately disposing of the kegs and littering can cause damage to the environment.  

To encourage more people to recycle, Deposit Return Schemes (DRS) are slowly being introduced across Europe. In fact, in Germany it is already possible to use the DRS (Pfand System) for our 2L kegs and we are using Der Grüne Punkt to pick up the larger kegs.

DRS Introduction Timeline

Extending products’ lifetimes is a step in the right direction towards circularity. We want to extend the lifetime of our machines to reduce landfill waste and emissions from the manufacturing process. To extend the lifetime of our SUBs we offer repair services – just in case your SUB develops a fault. We also provide repair and refurbishment services for BLADE machines in the UK and are looking to expand this process to the Netherlands. 

You can also do your bit to close the loop:

• How to repair our products: If issues with your SUB or Blade machine persist after having tried our SUB Maintenance and Troubleshooting FAQs or Blade Maintenance and Troubleshooting FAQs, just send our customer care team a message and attach your purchase receipt and we’ll help you out.    
• Purchase a refurbished machine: Buy a refurbished BLADE appliance while stocks last here.  

We know that our plastic kegs are one of the biggest challenges concerning sustainability at Beerwulf, so we must be proactive in closing the loop to reduce waste. We’ve listened to our customers’ feedback and will be starting an exciting new project for 2023 – developing a scheme which will allow our customers to return their empty kegs to us. We are currently starting this project in the UK and will expand to other markets when possible.

Beer

At Beerwulf, we hate throwing away beer, and one of the many reasons we hate doing it is because it’s a waste of all the energy and resources that have gone into making it. We try to prevent beer from being thrown away by pushing promotions on beers nearing their expiration dates through discounts and our “zero waste” packs.  

We are in the midst of an exciting project we started last year. We were trying to find a less wasteful way to deal with expired beer rather than simply disposing of it. We are investigating the possibility of using our expired beer to produce renewable energy, as it can be a feedstock for biofuel – how cool would that be? Currently, we are doing trial runs with a number of biogas plants.

Returns 

We’re happy to say that our return rate is only around 1%, lower than the average e-commerce return rate which is currently around 20% (1,2,3). But then, who would want to return a pack of our delicious beer? Minimising the number of returns is great for the environment by stopping unnecessary transport emissions and preventing products from being wasted. We hope to get the number of returns even lower. Throughout 2022 we will be gathering more data about returns, in hopes of developing a data-based strategy to achieve this. 

If a product is returned, and it can be guaranteed that it has not been opened or tampered with; we will restock the product to avoid unnecessary wastage. 

Reducing Emissions

Transport  

Our transport is made up of two main stretches: the inbound stretch (from the brewer to the warehouse) and the last mile (from the warehouse to you).  

Find out more on their respective websites: Yodel, DPDgroup, UPS, DHL, PostNL, Ascendia

You can see our last-mile carriers on the map. PostNL, DPD group, Ascendia and DHL offset their emissions by investing in renewable energy projects by default. We also hope to provide you all with a second, sustainable delivery option with a no/low emission carrier as soon as it is feasible for us, such as delivery by bike.  

We are investigating how to reduce emissions from our inbound stretch, with trains being looked at as an alternative to fossil fuel-powered trucks. We are also exploring ways in which our supply chain can be optimised, by looking at where we are sourcing products from to reduce travel miles.   

Packaging  

Our cardboard packaging is made by Smurfit Kappa, with whom our relationship has sustainability as a core focus. In May 2022, Beerwulf was invited to be the case study in the Smurfit Kappa Young Masterclass “Open the Future of Beerwulf”, during which we collaborated to find potential sustainable solutions across Beerwulf’s entire supply chain.  

We are constantly working towards improving the packaging and making it better for our customers and less damaging to the planet. We want to decrease our packaging's impact by addressing both circularity and emissions challenges. Looking at how we can reduce the amount of material used is an ongoing process, which will decrease emissions by increasing our material efficiency. We have switched to using leaflets made from 100% recycled paper and are now using the recycled version of packing paper. 

We also want to remove the last bit of plastic – the tape – from our packaging and are looking at the possibility of switching to paper-based tape. Plastic tape cannot be recycled, unlike some paper tapes, therefore our current option is not circular. 

Social Sustainability

Diversity 

We try our best to celebrate diversity and inclusion at Beerwulf. We have a Diversity and Inclusion Manifesto that encourages understanding, acceptance, and value of differences between people. 

Currently at Beerwulf, we have a 50/50 gender balance, with two of the six senior management members being women, including our CEO. We are very proud that the leader of our Pack, Cindy Tervoort, is setting the precedent of female CEOs in the beer industry. We have also tried to showcase female brewers through our blog content (check it out), on our Instagram and through internal beer tastings with female brewers. 

We are also very international with currently well over 20 nationalities represented within our team. Making sure that every employee feels celebrated within Beerwulf is paramount to us, and therefore is a key part of our HR team’s goals for the coming years.

Responsible Consumption

At Beerwulf, we do not support excessive drinking and stand for responsible and moderate consumption. We have a range of alcohol-free beers for everyone to choose from, both on home draught and in our beer cases. For more information on the HEINEKEN Group’s stance on this issue, look here.