Company: Brown-Forman

Welcome to our series aimed at spotlighting BIER projects.  As part of our Member and Stakeholder spotlight series featuring the individual leaders within BIER member companies and stakeholder organizations, our project spotlight series highlights BIER member companies and stakeholder organizations involved in the innovative Charco Bendito project.

Discover how practitioners and their companies have collaborated to create and implement an innovative watershed initiative. This first-of-its-kind project focuses on three main goals: improving water accessibility, enhancing water quality, and ensuring water availability. Learn from their key insights and find out what drives them to promote environmental sustainability in the beverage sector and beyond.

Briefly describe your role and responsibilities, how long you have worked with your company and your role/ involvement with the Charco Bendito project.

I have been working for Casa Herradura for 15 years, always in positions related to the environment. I manage and oversee processes for handling vinasses and bagasse, which are characteristic waste products of the tequila industry. The vinasses are treated in a wastewater treatment plant, and the bagasse is composted and used as fuel in the biomass boiler.

My team and I are responsible for regulatory compliance in environmental, health, safety, and sustainability areas.

What were the initial drivers or incentives that committed you to the Charco Bendito project?

I am the representative for Casa Herradura and Brown-Forman on the Charco Bendito project at the Latin America level. I was fortunate to be part of the founding team at one of the companies that helped launch this incredible project.

Brown-Forman has been a long-time participant with BIER for many years. Following several meetings in Latin America, we invited the Red Bioterra and Bardo Communication teams to join us. They presented three collaborative projects focused on basin-level water management. At this point, in 2020, we decided to join Charco Bendito. Charco Bendito is a first-of-its-kind watershed collaboration addressing shared water challenges in the Municipality of Tlajomulco de Zuniga, Jalisco Mexico, a part of the Lerma Santiago watershed in and around Guadalajara, Mexico.

How has the company’s involvement in Charco Bendito evolved over the course of the project, and what do you hope can be achieved in the future?

We have been involved with Charco Bendito from the start and have consistently supported its direction and growth. Our local team is actively engaged and always looking to contribute. For Brown-Forman-Casa Herradura, this is our first external project, and it has been a valuable learning experience. We’ve met many experienced individuals through this project. Charco Bendito has shown us how to successfully implement collaborative projects, and we hope to apply these lessons to future water stewardship initiatives in our Casa Herradura community.

How has your participation in the Charco Bendito project aligned with your company’s sustainability and ESG goals and commitments?

We initially got involved with Charco Bendito because it aligned with our goals, particularly water issues. Among the many areas of impact of the project, the most critical aspects for us are water infiltration, achieving water balance (replenishing the same amount of water that we consume), and ensuring the community has access to water.  Additional benefits include CO2 capture, community assistance, and the Mujeres de Miel productive project.

Name one of the practical solutions or best practices you learned in working on the Charco Bendito project and why it was important to you and/ or your company.

Operationally, in the technical case of Red Bio Terra, it is a company that operates quite well, specifically regarding reforestation processes. They taught us that, after planting a tree, you should also plan to manage its maintenance for the next three years. This is something I hadn’t considered in our prior reforestation efforts, but it will inform any future reforestation work at Casa Herradura. From a technical standpoint, I find the reforestation aspect really interesting, as well as how to manage an appropriate process to ensure significant survival.

On a strategic level, we have experienced consultants who help keep the project on track. We’ve built productive relationships with colleagues from various allied companies, which have been crucial to the project’s success. Some of these individuals and companies bring extensive experience and insights into managing specific projects, while others offer technical expertise and learn alongside us, understanding their roles better.

Apart from the technical results and benefits of the project, the experience of participating in such a unique global project motivates me to keep moving forward with future projects.

What important takeaway or key learning will you take from your involvement with this project and apply to other projects?

One of my biggest lessons has been governance, as the rules have been clear from the beginning, given that several companies are involved. Another lesson has been gaining insights from other companies with prior knowledge and experience, which aids in scaling and evolving.

In your opinion, what are the key elements that make this project so successful, and how would you use those elements in application to other similar projects?

A significant success has been the help from consulting firms Bardo Communications and Red Bio Terra. They have engaged many stakeholders, including community members, authorities, universities, and businesses, and have effectively coordinated all the actors. Without successfully managing communication across all the participants, we wouldn’t have the same reach even if we were performing well, and other companies might not have approached us to join. Another key element of the project is that it involves companies that are essentially competitors, but within the project and its governance, we operate as one family. The good reputation and reach of all the companies involved have also been crucial.

Charco Bendito, also known as “Blessed Puddle,” was a dream turned into a multi-industry and multi-year first-of-its-kind watershed collaboration. In keeping with the spirit of this project, if you had an eco-superpower that could be used to radically accelerate and scale best practices learned from this project, which one would it be, and how would you use it?

If I had a superpower, it would be the ability to travel through time, allowing me to touch a person and take them to the future—a future where we have not acted together through alliances like this, to realize that if we don’t act today, we will head towards disaster.