Beverage industry leaders from across the globe convened October 14-16 for the Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable (BIER) semi-annual meeting. Ecolab hosted the event at the company’s Global Research, Development and Engineering (RD&E) Center on its Schuman Campus in Eagan, Minn. The three-day agenda focused on BIER’s current work to reduce resource consumption, mitigate environmental impacts and ensure sustainable growth of the beverage sector.

“We welcomed the opportunity to host our colleagues from the world’s leading beverage companies,” said Jill Wyant, Ecolab executive vice president and president, Global Food & Beverage. “Through BIER, the global beverage industry shares best practices that advance sustainability initiatives and further improve the environmental footprints of all its members.”

Meeting topics included discussions around sector-specific energy management guidance, ecosystem services principles, water stewardship through performance in context, emerging product environmental footprint category rules and best practices in sustainability reporting.

Additionally, representatives from World Resources Institute, The Nature Conservancy and CERES attended, providing key stakeholder perspectives to working group sessions. Meeting attendees also received a tour of Ecolab’s state-of-the-art RD&E facility, where they learned about the latest Ecolab research and innovations in food safety and water management for the food and beverage industry.

Through the collective experience and knowledge of its membership, BIER collaborates to define the environmental sustainability aspects most relevant to the beverage sector. By doing so, BIER is able to monitor data and trends, engage with key stakeholders, develop best practices and guide a course of action for the future. Current BIER initiatives include defining context-based metrics for water use, developing energy assessment tools to help prioritize and mitigate climate change impacts, and establishing guiding principles around ecosystem dependencies and biodiversity conservation measures across the beverage product value chain.