Boston Beer Company Releases Inaugural ESG Report
The Boston Beer Company, maker of iconic, high-quality brands such as Samuel Adams, Truly Hard Seltzer, Twisted Tea, Dogfish Head and Angry Orchard, released its inaugural Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Report.
"While we're just starting our journey, we've long believed it's important to provide accurate and transparent reporting on the impact our company has on our people, our planet and our communities," said Jill Westra, senior manager of sustainability, Boston Beer Company. "We started the process of establishing a solid baseline in 2021. This baseline will give us important data-driven context that will help us keep getting better over time."
Some of the key highlights of the Boston Beer Company's 2021 ESG Report, Setting the Course for the Future, are outlined below.
Company and Governance
Boston Beer is making ESG a bigger part of its governance by creating an Executive Sustainability Committee, a new position for a Senior Manager of Sustainability, and a Sustainability Network Group for employees.
The company did a thorough materiality assessment to narrow down the huge number of ESG issues and focus on the ones that its business and stakeholders thought were most important.
Planet
Boston Beer has made it easier to collect and manage utility data from its production breweries, which shows how much energy and water it uses.
The company acknowledges that it believes climate change is real and is committing to future action, with 2021 as the year it set the course for the future.
Dogfish Head Re-Gen-Ale, the company's first beer that can be tracked back to its source, was made by the Dogfish Head brand. It addresses climate change through agriculture by using Indigo Carbon, a programme that pays growers to store carbon in their soil.
People
Continuing its focus on coworker training, Boston Beer achieved an average of 16 hours of coworker time on learning and development – for a total of approximately 43,600 hours – which helped it promote more than 430 coworkers in 2021.
The company set up a DE&I baseline and put in place programmes that make everyone in the company more aware and responsible.
In its first year participating, Boston Beer scored 70% on the HRC Corporate Equality Index in 2021.
Coworkers gave Boston Beer high scores on questions related to pride in working for the company; believing in Boston Beer's values; concern for coworker safety, personal well-being and diversity; confidence in the future of Boston Beer; and pride in its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Communities
The company started Boston Beer Volunteers! so that its employees could work with local nonprofits in the places where it does business.
The company contributed over $2.34 million to support programmes, including Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream (BTAD) and Dogfish Head's Beer & Benevolence programme.
Source: PRNewswire
