Company: Bacardi
Connect with Miguel on LinkedIn
Welcome to our series aimed at spotlighting BIER projects. As part of our Member and Stakeholder spotlight series, which features 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.
Learn how these practitioners and their companies have collaborated to develop and implement this innovative, first-of-its-kind, basin-level watershed initiative addressing three main goals: water accessibility, quality, and availability. Gain insights into key learnings and what inspires each of them to advance environmental sustainability in the beverage sector and collectively, overall.
Briefly describe your role and responsibilities and how long you have worked with your company.
I am the Sustainability Manager for Tequila PATRÓN® at Bacardi. I joined the company more than 18 years ago. I have a dream job – I spend every day focused on doing the right thing for the planet and reducing our environmental footprint.
As a Bacardi representative in the fantastic Charco Bendito project, my role is to work with my counterparts across the other member companies to ensure we set the right strategy, take the right actions, and achieve the best possible results.
What were the initial drivers or incentives that committed you to the Charco Bendito project?
At Bacardi, we have clear objectives for reducing our water-usage, improving efficiencies, and replenishing the water we use back to the source with a target to be water-positive across our operations by 2030. The Charco Bendito project enables us to have a real impact on water replenishment in Mexico, on the doorstep of our production sites for PATRÓN® and CAZADORES® tequilas, so we didn’t hesitate to join the project from inception.
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?
The project has evolved enormously. We started in 2020, the same year the COVID-19 pandemic began, so naturally, some companies decided not to join the project due to the uncertainty of the health situation worldwide. However, we were one of five companies that accepted the challenge and started with the intervention of 21.5 hectares in the area of Cerro Viejo, in the municipality of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, Jalisco.
Today, not only have more companies joined the project, but we have also increased our objective to 355 hectares of intervention, increasing the benefit of water infiltration to the subsoil, carbon capture, and the integration of the local community, which has made the Charco Bendito project stronger than ever.
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.
In my opinion, the topic of nature-based solutions has been one of the best practices applied. In this case, the restoration we have carried out in the Cerro Viejo National Protected Area is helping to regulate the climate in this area through carbon capture; preventing soil erosion; preventing water runoff; and allowing it to infiltrate into the subsoil – thus facilitating access to water for the local community.
Secondly, I have learned that collaborating across industries is hugely advantageous. A huge part of the initiative’s success is down to the organization, involvement, and empathy shown by the representatives of each company during the different phases of the project; we have coordinated in such a way that we have focused our passion for nature in the planning of each of the actions implemented in Charco Bendito.
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?
I would highlight three:
- Besides infiltration, we find benefits in CO2 capture, biodiversity, water availability, and community employment.
- Collaboration and respect with other companies, with different personalities, and with other approaches in terms of the industry. While we all have a common objective and common interest, each member brings different strategies, experiences and perspectives to the table. That collaboration and respect between the members has been fundamental to the project.
- And definitely, the results. We have worked across 155 hectares in which more than 66K trees have been planted, and we have facilitated the infiltration of more than 524K m3 of water in the project area.
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?
My power would be to generate environmental conditions to create clouds that could have precipitation in wooded and agricultural areas; the ideal would be all year round, so we avoid dry spells when we don’t have rain storms.
Do you want to add any final comments?
Through the Charco Bendito project we are making an impact and supporting the ecosystem of the site. Now we observe a more wooded area; we observe more and more biodiversity through camera traps; and we are providing clean water to the inhabitants of the local community. These are the results we work for, and we are so proud to be playing our part.
The Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable (BIER) is a technical coalition of leading global beverage companies working together to advance environmental sustainability within the beverage sector.
By BIER [crp]