2023 marked continued progress on topics such as watershed management, regenerative agriculture, decarbonization efforts, and climate action. As the Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable (BIER) continued in its 17th year, aiming to reduce resource consumption, mitigate impacts, and ensure sustainable continuity and the future of the global beverage industry, the notable highlights of the coalition’s efforts are attributed to the members’ collaboration and commitment to advance the sector’s environmental sustainability by serving as a technical resource and knowledge base and building for transparency throughout the value chain.

In acknowledgment of BIER’s members and contributions, below are some of our 2023 Highlights.

• Water Circularity Good Practices Guide – This guide seeks to coalesce insights already developed by BIER and other leaders in the fields of water stewardship and circularity with the ever-important and necessary consideration of appropriate stakeholders.
• Internal Price of Carbon Publication – Implementation Guide For Beverage Companies, to better understand how Internal Carbon Pricing (ICP) can be a useful tool in a company’s decarbonization journey.
• Water Replenishment Insights – The aim of this document is for companies to be better positioned to establish impactful collaborations and make meaningful investments in water replenishment initiatives that result in measurable impacts at the catchment level.
• Charco Bendito at World Water Week – In BIER’s World Water Week presentation, participants learned why and how global beverage and food leaders collaborated to develop and implement this innovative basin-level watershed initiative that addresses three main goals: water accessibility, quality, and availability.
• BIER’s COOL Challenge – BIER launched and celebrated winners of the Cool Challenge. The Cool Challenge is a groundbreaking Innovation Competition hosted by BIER’s Coolition, where we invited passionate innovators to revolutionize commercial refrigeration related to chilled, canned or bottled beverages at their point of sale and shape a sustainable future for the industry.

Looking ahead to 2024, BIER’s commitment to bring about positive beverage sector environmental change continues.

Benchmarking Report: Noted for BIER’s benchmarking reports, which is a quantitative and qualitative benchmark study that examines water and energy use and carbon emissions in the beverage sector, the 2023 sustainable benchmarking study is forthcoming in late January 2024 and will provide insight into water stewardship practices, emission reductions, and energy efficiency performance.

Additionally, our work streams, guidance, and publications are in continued alignment to support the UN sustainable development goals of Clean Water and Sanitation, Affordable and Clean Energy and Climate Action. For nearly 18 years, BIER has been the model of industry collaboration and has continuously advanced the development of sustainable solutions through beverage industry-specific data collection, methodologies, standard-setting, best practice sharing, and thought leadership. We look forward to 2024 with the opportunity to advance environmental sustainability and the future of the global beverage industry.