This American Beer Giant Is Leading The Pack In Going Green

If you're a fan of American beer, you're in luck, because as Carlos Brito, the CEO of Anheuser-Busch InBev, tells Christopher Helman at Forbes, the beer giant is making some major strides toward going green. Anheuser-Busch InBev works with the accessible, familiar beers we know and love: Budweiser, Stella Artois and Corona. While everybody loves a good micro-brew, there's something to be said for leading by example when your company and product has an impressive reach and consumer-base.

How to make beer go green? Thankfully, it has nothing to do with colored food dye. As Brito explains it, they're committed to making the company's $400 million a year of purchased electricity 100% green. Of course, this doesn't happen overnight. Their plan is to be using totally green electricity by 2025. As Brito explains to Helman, “In some markets it’s cheaper to do this route. It makes business sense and it lessens the environmental impact.”

And being eco-friendly isn't a recent priority of the company, either. In fact, they've experimented with sustainability in a variety of ways. As Helman notes, they have a brewery in upstate New York that runs entirely on solar energy. In Argentina, they use  bio-diesel made from soybeans. And at that enormous Bud brewery in Texas? According to Helman, their heating boilers are burning methane from landfills. 

Even though they have a solidly green background, a goal of this magnitude is a serious project. But as Brito tells Helman, they're confident they can pull it off. "It’s like anything in tech, it’s only getting better and cheaper with time. Look 20 years back and wind and solar were not competitive. Now in Mexico it is 20% cheaper to buy 100% wind."

He has a fantastic point—green-focused technology has made huge advances in the past few decades, and right now, we seem to be on a roll in the right direction. With every new innovation, there's a period where things might  feel risky, expensive, or plain unrealistic. But as companies continue to take educated risks, we're sure to reap the rewards down the road.