Company: Molson Coors Beverage Company

Connect with Audrey on LinkedIn

Welcome to our series aimed at spotlighting the individual leaders within BIER member companies and stakeholder organizations. Learn how these practitioners and their companies are addressing pressing challenges around water, energy, agriculture, climate change 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.

My official title is Manager of Enterprise Risk at Molson Coors Beverage Company (Molson Coors). In this role, I help facilitate a process aligned with strategy to identify the risks (and opportunities) that are material to the business. We make sure we identify emerging risks, have actions to mitigate, KPIs for tracking progress, etc. I’m also a member of our sustainability team and an official beer taster. I’ve been with Molson Coors for 24 years.

How has the company’s sustainability program evolved over the years, and what are your specific priorities for 2021?

It is pretty amazing! We’ve evolved from essentially having no formal sustainability program when I started 24 years ago; we mainly focused on compliance and resource conservation. Now, Molson Coors has leading-edge ambitions, including zero waste to landfill status at all breweries and emission reduction targets to meet the 1.5-degree scenarios in our direct operations. Specific priorities for 2021 include moving our renewable energy strategy forward and looking beyond our 2025 goals.

How do you feel being a BIER member will help you successfully address the key areas you are addressing in 2021?

We’ve used many of the practical solutions and best practices developed by BIER. We have recently been looking at the True Cost of Water Toolkit and the Facility Decarbonization Playbook. We’re also very interested in the Water Circularity Metric work in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainability Development (WBCSD).

I find it valuable and inspiring to see what our peer companies are doing. We know what we’re doing at Molson Coors, but to see the passion in every one of our peer companies and how we can join together and work together for the greater good is impressive.

There is great value to be found in BIER’s work projects, the success in Mexico on the Charco Bendito project, the water circularity, and context-based decision-making guidance. When we are working on related topics, we view the different toolkits as a benchmark check. We will question our ideas or approaches to determine if they are aligned with BIER guidance or, conversely, question if BIER is aligned with the proposed path forward. As a sustainability professional, it is helpful and rewarding to reach out to other BIER members and get their feedback and thoughts on an idea or approach. That is wonderful.

Returning the question you asked, “How have things progressed from the beginning of our sustainability journey to now?” Back in 1997, we didn’t have formal sustainability goals. We focused on compliance and conservation at our sites. Fast forward to now, and we are now making a meaningful difference across our operations and the value chain. We are not just following the rules, but collectively, BIER and its membership are superheroes helping save the planet. I love it!

 Share a recent accomplishment of your company’s sustainability initiatives/achievements you are most proud of and why.

I’m so proud of our zero waste to landfill efforts across the company. We have a goal for all of our large production operations to become zero waste to landfill by 2025. I love that we don’t have trucks full of trash leaving our facilities and going right to the landfills. It takes ongoing effort from so many people across the breweries to ensure that we’re doing it right. This past year, despite the challenges of the pandemic, the Zagreb brewery in Croatia became our newest zero waste to landfill facility. A remarkable accomplishment for our company and the communities and environment where we have our operations.

One of the things that I love about this initiative is its journey because it’s a testament to the power of an individual to make a difference. Our drive to zero waste was sparked by the passion of one of our hourly brewery employees, who noticed that we were not doing a good job segregating recyclables from trash.  His energy and desire led to engagement and excitement about getting our brewery in Ohio to be landfill-free.  The momentum moved from one site to the next, and here we are today, with all of our major breweries in the US achieving zero waste to landfill.

Another recent accomplishment was gaining internal alignment on our renewable energy strategy, focusing on local and unique projects to our operations. Renewable energy is crucial to delivering on our carbon reduction goals, which were approved by the Science-Based Target Initiative (SBTi). I’m so excited to work with our renewable energy working team to move this project forward in 2021.

If you had one superpower that could be used to radically accelerate and scale sustainable best practices, which one would it be, and how would you use it?

What I want is more than one superpower! I can think of several, but this question reminds me of the movie Back to the Future and the time machine. The time machine was able to use lightning as the energy source to return to the present day. Later in the movie, they used other items, like banana peels and trash, and turned them into fuel. If I had a superpower, it would work along those lines. My superpower would be to take all this waste and turn it into some sustainable fuel for the future. I imagine being able to zap waste and magically transform it to fuel so that it could power homes, transportation, and other uses.

BIER Publications referenced in this interview:
True Cost of Water Toolkit
Performance in Watershed Context Insights Paper
Performance in Watershed Context
Water Circularity Metrics Tool and Guidance