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Our Sustainability Story

HEINEKEN has been around for over 150 years, and we intend to be around for another 150 years by making a difference in society.

As the UK’s leading pub, cider and beer business, the way we make and serve our products can have a significant impact on our customers, communities and the environment. And so working sustainably and responsibly is fundamental to how we do business. It’s how we can protect the future of our business and our planet.

Brewing a Better World is our sustainability strategy. It helps to focus our efforts so we’re able to make a real difference. From growing the barley and apples that go into our beers and ciders, to working with our customers who serve a quality chilled pint – sustainability is embedded right across our value chain.

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Our Sustainability Story

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Our Focus Areas

Reducing CO2 Emissions

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Reducing CO2 Emissions

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Reducing CO2 Emissions

CO2 emissions directly contribute to climate change. Climate change is one of the biggest risks facing global society, but still emissions continue to rise.

Through our programme, 'Drop the C', we want to significantly reduce carbon emissions across our business.

Our 2030 global ambition is to grow our renewable energy usage to 70% by 2030. It’s a challenging plan that will require collaboration and game-changing innovation right across our business.

Modern and energy efficient breweries and cideries

Through a huge investment programme we’ve created a modern and energy-efficient cidery in Herefordshire and breweries in Manchester and Tadcaster.

We're proud to have already met our 2020 target on reducing CO2 emissions in production. We’ve cut our emissions by 69% since 2008, versus a target of 40%, and our CO2 use currently stands at 3.11kg CO2 per hl of cider and beer.

Packaging matters

Packaging plays a crucial role in ensuring the quality and safety of our products, but we also need to be mindful of the impact it can have on the environment.

We know we’ve a responsibility to make sure the packaging we use is as sustainable as possible. And we’ve made some real progress which we’re determined to continue.

Our ambition is to remove consumer facing and single-use plastic from our packaging by the end of 2021, ultimately eliminating nearly 1,380 tonnes of plastic from our supply chain.

Within the next 12 months, we’ll start to replace the plastic high cones which hold our cans together with other materials.

We’re also introducing recycled plastic into our shrink wrap, which keeps our multipacks together during transportation, with the aim of getting to 30% recycled content.

Protecting Water Resources

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Protecting Water Resources

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Protecting Water Resources

From barley field to brewery and bar, water is critical to our business. After all, beer's 95% water!

That’s why reducing our water consumption, as well as helping pubs and bars reduce theirs, is a key focus area for us.

However, with a 2020 global commitment to cut our water consumption up to 30%, it’s a challenge we’ve faced head on.

Water in production

We monitor water use across our whole supply chain to become more efficient all the way from barley field to bar through our ‘Every Drop’ water programme.

In 2018, we got our water usage down to 3.21hl of water to make 1hl of cider or beer.

This is a 24% reduction since 2008 and means we’ve surpassed our 2020 target in the UK.

Lowering water use in pubs and bars

Our ground breaking draught dispense system, SmartDispense, which launched in 2013, has revolutionised the way draught beer and cider is stored and served.

A triumph of environmental innovation, it helps pubs across the UK to deliver a consistently cold and fresh pint to people while saving on water and energy.

By cooling beer and cider from the moment it leaves the keg, SmartDispense allows line cleaning to be extended from once a week to every four weeks - cutting beer, cider and water waste by up to 75%.

SmartDispense systems are installed in over 2,000 pubs and bars with 30,000 cider and beer taps.

Since its launch, SmartDispense has saved 72 million pints of water from going down the drain. Look out for the ‘Green Pint’ logo in pubs and bars serving draught beer and cider through SmartDispense.

Sourcing Sustainability

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Sourcing Sustainability

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Sourcing Sustainability

We're committed to making a positive contribution to the UK economy by driving sustainable growth for our business and partners across the length of our supply chain.

As pressure on natural resources grows, responsible sourcing has never been more important.

100% sustainable barley

We're focused on securing a long-term, sustainable supply of raw materials, improving farmer livelihoods and raising standards throughout our supply chain.

100% of our barley is sourced in the UK and certified to the food farm assurance standard, Red Tractor. We’re also sharing best practice with 150 farmers through the Sustainable Futures Programme.

Growing with Communities

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Growing with Communities

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Growing with Communities

With pubs, breweries, a cidery and offices all around the UK, we enjoy playing a hands-on role in community life.

We want to make a positive impact through investment and supporting local activities.

The Orchard Project collaborates with Bulmers

One initiative that brings to life our commitment to building sustianable communities is Bulmers’ partnership with nationwide charity, The Orchard Project.

Our partnership with The Orchard Project started in 2014, with the aim of creating and restoring community orchards around the UK, giving more people access to green spaces on their doorsteps.

Over the past five years, we’ve created 200 community orchards, working with over 3,000 local volunteers. The programme has proved to be a powerful way of bringing people together to build healthier, happier and more sustainable communitites.

Watch how we transformed an orchard in Manchester in a matter of hours with the help of local volunteers and guest, Peter Andre.

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Brewing Good Cheer

Over nine million people in the UK are affected by loneliness. Brewing Good Cheer is our annual campaign to celebrate the important role pubs play in communities in bringing people together and helping to combat loneliness.

In 2018, the third year of the campaign, we hosted over 2,000 lonely and socially isolated people for lunch in their local pubs during the lead up to Christmas.

Over 100 colleagues also volunteered at the lunches held at pubs near to our offices, breweries and ciderie.

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Tackling Alcohol Harm

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Tackling Alcohol Harm

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Tackling Alcohol Harm

The majority of people enjoy our ciders and beers responsibly. For a minority however, we recognise that alcohol can be a problem.

Alcohol abuse is a complex societal issue, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. We take our role as one of the leading alcohol producers very seriously and are committed to a programme of actions.

We use the power of our ciders and beers to make moderation cool, and we’re building our low and no alcohol range for those looking to moderate their consumption.

To help people make better choices about their drinking and reduce alcohol-related harm, we support independent alcohol education charity Drinkaware. We also work with partners to reduce underage drinking, provide diversionary activities, and improve safety and standards in the night time economy.

Making moderation cool

When it comes to making moderate drinking ‘cool’, the unrivalled global reach of our flagship Heineken brand is invaluable. Each year, we dedicate at least 10% of our marketing spend to promoting responsible drinking through Heineken.

In 2017, we launched our ‘When You Drive, Never Drink’ partnership with Formula 1 along with a TV advert fronted by Sir Jackie Stewart. In 2018, we extended the campaign with a new TV advert ‘No Compromises’ starring F1 hero Nico Rosberg.

‘When You Drive, Never Drink’ is the latest is a series of responsible drinking campaigns from Heineken, following on from previous successes; Sunrise, Dance More Drink Slow and Moderate Drinkers Wanted.

Great tasting zero alcohol beer

We use the power of our brands to promote responsible consumption and make moderation cool. After 153 years of brewing our flagship Heineken, we’ve launched alcohol-free Heineken 0.0.

We know that increasingly, people are looking for options to complement their healthy lifestyles without compromising on taste, and so Heineken 0.0 is great for those looking to moderate their consumption.

The launch of Heineken 0.0 was accompanied by a series of three adverts called ‘Now You Can’, showing the moments in life that are perfect for an alcohol-free beer.

Partnerships to promote responsible consumption

We know we have the greatest impact by working in partnership with others.

We fund the independent alcohol education charity, Drinkaware, who help people to make more informed choices about their drinking. 9.4m people visited their website in 2017 with 841,000 using Drinkaware’s online tool to find out how many units and calories were in their drinks.

We’re also a founding member of the Portman Group and are committed to responsible marketing of our products and the work of the Local Alcohol Partnerships Group.

We work with Community Alcohol Partnerships (CAP) to reduce underage drinking with 150 schemes operating across the UK. Surveys of participating schools show an average 60% reduction in the number of Year 9-11 pupils who are drinking alcohol each week as a result of the CAP.

And we also support Best Bar None in around 120 towns and cities and Pubwatch to promote a safer night time economy in pubs, bars and clubs.

Promoting Health and Wellbeing

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Promoting Health and Wellbeing

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Promoting Health and Wellbeing

HEINEKEN is all about enjoyment of life.

Giving people an incredible experience is what our brands and pubs are all about.

That’s why making sure our colleagues are happy and healthy is important to us. Currently 80% of our 2,400 colleagues say they love working at HEINEKEN and are proud to do so. We want to keep improving on this.

Safety is our No. 1 priority

Whoever you are, whatever job you do, no job is worth doing if it can’t be done safely. This is the message we’ve been working tirelessly to get across at HEINEKEN. We bring it to life through our Life Saving Rules - 12 simple rules that will help to prevent accidents around our business.

We've investigated accidents across HEINEKEN and the learnings were clear – most accidents could have been avoided and so we acted on this.

We've issued all colleagues who regularly visit a pub cellar with a hand held Carbon Dioxide (CO2) monitor. While all our company cars have had a telematics system installed to encourage safe driving behaviours.

Physical and mental wellbeing

Getting our colleagues active is a a big focus for us and, following the huge success of the event in 2017 and 2018, 350 colleagues took part in this year’s HEINEKEN Race to the Tower, a 52, 26 or 13 mile walk, run or jog through the Cotswolds. The event has also raised over £100,000 for leading mental health charity, Mind.

Raising awareness of the link between mental and physical wellbeing is just one aspect of the stand we’ve taken on mental health, which can affect anyone at any time.

It’s something people often find hard to open up about and so we’ve recruited mental health champions from across our business to provide emotional support to anyone who’s feeling low.

We also implemented the national campaign, Take 10, amongst our colleagues with the simple ask that if someone they know is acting differently, step in and have a chat.

Green Grip

Introducing Green Grip. Our newest packaging innovation.

We’re eliminating plastic from millions of cans as we roll out innovative sustainable packaging across thousands of UK retailers despite COVID-19 challenges.

The effect single-use plastic is having on our planet can’t be ignored, And whilst plastic represents only 3% of our overall packaging, as a company we’re continuously looking for ways to improve the impact we have our planet.

That’s why we’re replacing the plastic rings from our multi-pack cans with a new bespoke packaging innovation called Green Grip – saving over 500 tonnes of plastic every year. The equivalent to 94 million plastic bags.

Green Grip is a 100% plastic-free robust cardboard topper. It’s recyclable, compostable and sustainably sourced. And importantly for shoppers, it’s easy to carry!

As part of a £22million investment, this eco-friendly solution has been delivered thanks to the hard work of colleagues in our Manchester Brewery who overcame Covid-19 challenges to get it on to supermarket shelves across the UK.

Green Grip is being rolled out across Heineken, Foster’s and Kronenbourg 1664, with the rest of our beers and ciders to follow.

Reporting

We publish regular updates to show our progress on our sustainability commitments. You can view and download them here.

Report Library

Global Sustainability

Find out more about our global sustainability ambitions and how we’re Brewing a Better World in many other countries.

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A very warm welcome to the UK’s leading pub, cider and beer business.

Want to know more about us? We’d love to share more about what we do, so all we need is your year of birth to make sure we’re communicating responsibly!

Our Sustainability Story

Our Sustainability Story

Our Focus Areas

Reducing CO2 Emissions

Reducing CO2 Emissions

Reducing CO2 Emissions

Modern and energy efficient breweries and cideries

Packaging matters

Protecting Water Resources

Protecting Water Resources

Protecting Water Resources

Water in production

Lowering water use in pubs and bars

Sourcing Sustainability

Sourcing Sustainability

Sourcing Sustainability

100% sustainable barley

Growing with Communities

Growing with Communities

Growing with Communities

The Orchard Project collaborates with Bulmers

Brewing Good Cheer

Tackling Alcohol Harm

Tackling Alcohol Harm

Tackling Alcohol Harm

Making moderation cool

Great tasting zero alcohol beer

Partnerships to promote responsible consumption

Promoting Health and Wellbeing

Promoting Health and Wellbeing

Promoting Health and Wellbeing

Safety is our No. 1 priority

Physical and mental wellbeing

Green Grip

Reporting

Global Sustainability