UK – Dutch multinational brewing giant Heineken has launched Greener Bar, a completely new entertainment experience designed to reduce waste, water, emissions and energy usage in the company’s event bars. 

Heineken said that every element of the Heineken Greener Bar- from the uniforms of the staff to the soil and plant ballasts weighing the bar down – has had a life before or will have a life long after the bar is gone. 

“From the coasters made from the spent grain of the barley used during the brewing process, through to the use of reusable and recyclable cups, everything is designed to create a completely circular bar experience,” the company said.  

The new bar was unveiled at the London E-Prix and was built in partnership with FormulaE, a single-seater motorsport championship for electric cars organised by the International Automobile Federation. 

 “The bar brings the best innovations from the motorsport industry together, while also using new building methods, materials and technologies that focus on improving how we upcycle, recycle and reuse materials to reduce our waste,” noted Heineken in a LinkedIn post. 

Per event, as analysed by Meet Green, the Heineken® Greener Bar saves up to 6,539kg of event waste which is the equivalent to the daily waste from 2,209 ‘average’ households. 

Greener bar also reportedly saves 5,335-kilowatt hours of energy, 21,128 kilograms of CO2 emissions, and 25,108 litres of water, making it one of the greenest event entertainment stations in the world today.  

Many other parts of the bar are made from recycled Heineken® crates, which will be re-used for every event, resulting in an estimated saving of 343kg worth of production emissions. 

Heineken now says that moving forward, the sustainable bar concept will act as a blueprint that it will use to “continue producing amazing events through sponsorships around the globe, that fans will remember, but the planet won’t.” 

Heineken’s Chill Station

As part of its continual journey to seek new innovations that can improve sustainability throughout the organisation, Heineken® has also created a one-of-a-kind experiment called The Chill Station, designed to explore and test new, more sustainable ways to chill beer. 

According to Heineken, the principles of convection and kinetic power (and a little bit of elbow grease) are used to chill Heineken® 0.0., a process can be done in a matter of minutes, resulting in a 30% energy saving. 

The chill bar takes sustainability a mile further by using standing tables and benches only made using reclaimed wood from elm trees that fell naturally near the Heineken® brewery in Amsterdam to reducing production emissions by 86%. 

The adoption of the Greener Bar and the Chill Station in the FormulaE event bolsters Heineken’s Brewing A Better World campaign where the company hopes to rid its entire value chain of carbon emissions by 2040. 

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