New Belgium Brewing recently completed its first corporate Sustainability Management System (SMS). Working with The Brendle Group, New Belgium developed an SMS that illustrates its leadership in sustainability. The SMS identifies target areas for focus, such as closing resource loops and reducing its carbon footprint, and outlines key performance indicators to measure success.

The completed SMS identified a series of critical goals and metrics including:

• a 50% reduction in per barrel carbon footprint as compared to 2006 levels
• increasing the brewery's waste stream diversion rate from 68% to 80%, after removing brewing by-products such as spent grain and yeast
• further expansion of its bike commuter advocacy program -- Team Wonderbike -- which has already drawn over 10,000 participants who have pledged to offset more than 7 million car miles by riding their bikes over the next 12 months -- through a targeted 50% increase in 2008 membership

As a result of the SMS process, we will be closing resource loops, reducing our carbon footprint, supporting innovation, and advocating sustainability through our beer portfolio and leading by example. These are things we identified as important to our mission, and The Brendle Group brought them together in a way that helped us define an actionable corporate strategy for consistently greater performance.
-- Jennifer Orgolini, New Belgium's Sustainability Director