Angela Resch Environmental organisations have been pressing Heineken to find ways of reducing the amount of natural resources used in the brew ing process and the emissions it produces. Because the company's two breweries in Switzerland, one in Winterthur and one in Chur, were small, they were less efficient and used a lot more fossil fuel and other resources to brew each hectolitre of beer. DRIVING TWICE THE DISTANCE ON THE SAME FUEL: HEINEKEN'S ACHIEVEMENT IN CHUR 2005 wmÊmKmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 2004 wmmmmmmmmmmmm To increase efficiency, Heineken decided to combine the capacity of these two breweries at a single location. The decision to shut down a brewery is not an easy one, because every brewery has its own history and occupies a place in the hearts and minds of the local people. It's an emotionally charged decision and needs solid justification for it to be accepted. In this case, there were several reasons which prompted Heineken's decision to end production in Winterthur and move it to the new brewery in Chur. And the efficien cy gains are considerable. The new Heineken brewery uses 43 percent less fossil fuel, 24 percent less electricity and 19 percent less water to produce 810,000 hectolitres of beer a year, which is 8.5 percent more than the two old breweries combined. The secret lies in the technology used to reduce and recycle the steam generated by the produc tion process. 'We need less fuel because we produce less steam, and the steam we do produce is reused in the process,'says Angela Resch, Environmental Coordinator at Heineken Switzerland, who is responsible for its ongo ing water and energy saving programmes. As well as advances in technology and economies of scale, there's also human effort underlying the energy savings, according to Angela Resch. She heads a working group called ZEUS, which is researching ways of reducing the use of resources within the context of Heineken's Aware of Water and Aware of Energy programmes. Through the work of ZEUS, the brewery has started to recycle waste water for cooling other facili ties at the plant. It has also prompted the brewery to carry out periodic checks on energy consumption and make adjustments where necessary because, left to its own devices, the equipment tends gradually to use more energy. These may be relatively minor measures that employees are taking the trouble to include in their daily work, but they have a significant effect. 'Applying energy-awareness is difficult: it comes on top of doing your normal job,' says Angela Resch. 'I'm proud to be part of a team that, as well as their day-to-day work, also keep up with ZEUS's improvement efforts.' Specific thermal energy consumption breweries performance of Heineken world-wide, in MJ/hl beer 2006 2004 -mmmmm 2003 2002 2001 116 117 111 Specific electricity consumption breweries performance of Heineken world-wide, in MJ/hl beer 2006 2005 2003 2002 2001 target actual target actual 19

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Heineken - Milieuverslag | 2002 | | pagina 97