10% of all global greenhouse emissions come from food and drink waste. Lockdown made the situation far worse. As global supply chains ground to a halt, billions of tons of food goods began to deteriorate, creating a food waste crisis. A keg of beer has a shelf-life of 120 days. So with bars being forced to remain shut, bar owners were facing the prospect of pouring millions of pints of beer down the drain. This would have a major environmental impact globally. Sustainability and responsibility sit at the heart of Heineken’s business. Heineken has publicly pledged to become carbon neutral in its beer production by 2030. Something had to be done. To both maintain the on-trade’s trust in Heineken, and to fulfil our environmental commitments, we needed to make sure the beer didn’t go to waste.

Heineken turned lockdown beer that was going to waste into a global sustainable programme. How? They completely reversed their business model, buying back 15.5 million litres of lockdown beer from closed bars and transforming it into a new range of sustainable solutions that could be served to communities globally.

The Unwasted Beer was transformed into biogas, electricity, animal feed, fertiliser, water and heat.

When we couldn’t serve beer. We served the planet.

To both maintain the on-trade’s trust in Heineken, and to fulfil our environmental commitments, we needed to stop millions more pints from being poured down the drain.

How do you repurpose beer?

That was the question we posed to an international panel of environmental experts and Heineken’s sustainability experts.

The answers surprised us.

Even once expired, beer has a multitude of uses.

Biofuel. Fertiliser. Plastics. Animal feed.

Bartenders were throwing their expired beer away because they believed it was worthless.

But with just a few modifications to our production chain, spent beer could easily be transformed into a usable and sustainable resource.

We set out to repurpose beer into a sustainable tool to help kickstart communities’, bars’ (and Heineken’s) recovery.

Our experts designed and created a ‘beer saving station’ to convert 15 million pints of expired beer into biogas by fermenting it in a digester.

In Cork, this biogas was used to power 1000 homes a day and heat a care home in the local community.

The process of fermenting beer into biogas also produces a valuable nutrient-rich fertiliser - of which Heineken was able to produce 4,600 tonnes.

This was part donated to the local community, part sold back to our suppliers.

Roughly 13 million pints of beer were transformed into animal feed.

The initiative also inspired our Spain brewery to transform 178,500 tonnes of byproducts into animal feed, which was also sold to suppliers.

This wasn’t just a smart use of a waste product - animals fed with beer grains also emit 13% less greenhouse gases (ILVO, 2020).

In total, we bought back over 28 million expired pints (19 million in Ireland, 9 million in England). Using innovative technologies, we generated enough sustainable power to heat 61,687 homes and produce 4,600 tonnes of fertiliser for our suppliers and the local community.

The initiatives had huge PR value for Heineken, with an earned reach of over 67 million. Meanwhile, our media spend was tiny - just enough to cover a series of billboards.

Moreover, Heineken grew to position 16 out of 589 companies within the Food Products industry group of Morning Star’s Sustainalytics rankings.

Heineken also enjoyed a measurable growth in trust from the on-trade.

On average, our bar partners in markets were 4.9% more satisfied with Heineken in 2021 versus 2019 (Madison 2021).

The Unwasted Beer project survives globally. Heineken continues to look for new uses for its spent beer, and beer by-products.