How Canberra brewery Capital Brewing Co is helping save the planet though craft beer

Canberra craft brewery Capital Brewing Co is leading the way with a culture that respects staff and the environment and hopes others will follow its example.

There’s no doubt that craft beer is a source of joy for enthusiasts around Australia, but one brewery in the nation’s capital is also approaching as a “force for good”.

Ever since it launched in the Canberra suburb of Fyshwick six years ago, Capital Brewing Co has taken the approach that treating their staff and the environment with respect is at least as important as making excellent beer (which they most certainly do).

“That’s the idea really,” says co-founder Laurence Kain, who has seen his company become one of the country’s biggest independent brewers since launching in April 2021. “We’re trying to operate a business that looks after its team and staff and the community in which we operate. That is something we have done from the beginning and we have amplified as we have gotten larger and had greater resources to do more in that space.”

Part of the Capital philosophy is to engage with grassroots organisations to help them raise funds by donating product and have so far helped more than 400 arts, sports, music, recreation and heath groups with its Good Natured Community program. But the approach has been baked into the company from the very beginning with an ambition to achieve the coveted B-Corp accreditation, which measures a company’s entire social and environmental impact, as well as trailblazing work to achieve Carbon Neutral certification.

Capital achieved the prestigious B-Corp accreditation earlier this year, following in the steps of Stone and Wood and 4Pines, both of which are now internationally owned. Melbourne Brewery Brick Lane has since followed suit and Lane hopes that many more of the 700 plus breweries in the country will also join the small but growing club.

Capital Brewing Co founder Laurence Kain.

“We feel like it’s important for us to lead by example that you can be an independently owned business and a smaller business and still do the right thing within the organisation by staff and by the environment,” Kain says.

“That’s something as simple as making sure you are paying all of your people at or above the award wage and everyone has a detailed job description and a contract. And in our industry in particular, among small brewers, it’s amazing how much of that doesn’t happen. We’re not making people do unpaid overtime and stuff like that.

Capital’s B-Corp accreditation came on the heels of the company becoming the first brewery in the country to achieve a Carbon Neutral certification across its entire operations and products from the Federal Government. The monumental feat came after exhaustive data-gathering to measure the impact of the company from the farming of the barley, through to the heating and cooling and power used in the brewing process right through to delivering products in cans to consumers, and all the associated freight costs in between.

“It’s like any manufacturing industry, it’s relatively heavy on utility consumption,” Kain says. “That’s part of the carbon neutral process for us, looking at where our biggest sources of emissions are and asking how do we reduce them? So, it’s looking right through our supply chain because typically it is a relatively intensive process. It’s nowhere near steel. But how do we reduce our consumption of utilities and in turn our production of emissions through creating our product?”

Beer production can be tough on the environment but there are ways to offset the impact.

Once again, Kain hopes that the hard work already done by Capital – in conjunction with Climate Active and Pangolin Associates – to create a template on how to reduce emissions and environmental impact can be adopted by others

“Now other brewers can certify with significantly reduced accounting expenses in gaining the certification from the work that we have already done,” says Kain.

Kain says he doesn’t yet know what the financial impact on Capital will be for the company’s actions but he says that’s not the point – the cost of inaction is far higher.

“Businesses of all kinds have been operating in an irresponsible way for a long time and have been using resources without a lot of thought to the impact that it has,” he says. “That was a cultural thing and that culture is starting to shift but the reality of it is that changing the way that you do that comes at a cost. And it’s hard to attach exactly what the cost is or exactly what the commercial return is. But what is relatively easy to calculate is the cost of society more broadly not doing anything and that is fairly well evidenced in scientific climate change reports.”

GO, GO GABS

Capital’s Laurence Kain says he’s psyched for this year’s GABS Hottest 100 Craft Beers People’s Choice Poll, after voting opened this week.

Fellow Canberra brewer BentSpoke took out the top spot in the 2021 list with their Crankshaft American IPA but Capital scored two positions in the top 10 with their XPA and their Coast Ale.

“Our XPA got Best New Beer in Australia and it was positioned at No. 7 and we are hoping to get it in the top 3 this year, so that’s tasting really good,” he says.

Voting is open until January 20, 2023 at gabshottest100.com/au with the winner announced on January 28.

Bentspoke Crankshaft – winner of last year’s GABS Hottest 100

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Originally published as How Canberra brewery Capital Brewing Co is helping save the planet though craft beer