Inside Tipsy Tribe, a small brewery and distillery in Brussels, the smell of warm grain fills the space. Tanks hum softly, hoses lie coiled on the floor. Brewing beer looks simple here: water, grain, hops, and yeast. Yet the environmental impact of this seemingly straightforward drink is anything but small.
According to Victor van den Belt of Milieu Defensie, ‘what we drink, how it is packaged, and where it comes from largely determines the climate impact of our beer.’ Standing in breweries like this one, the challenge of sustainability quickly becomes visible.
The Footprint of Beer
During the brewing process itself, malting, mashing, boiling, cooling, and cleaning, water use averages between four and six liters per liter of beer. But when the full supply chain is included, such as the cultivation of barley and hops, the water footprint can rise to 45 to 155 liters per glass, depending on the region. The CO₂ emissions are significant as well: globally, a single beer produces roughly 0.8 to 1.3 kilos of CO₂, with packaging alone accounting for up to forty percent of that total.
Victor emphasizes that focusing solely on what happens inside breweries like Tipsy Tribe gives an incomplete picture. ‘The climate impact of beer does not lie only in the brewing process, but mainly in raw materials, packaging, and production efficiency,’ he says. Sustainability in the beer sector is therefore shaped not just by the brewery floor, but also by agriculture and logistics. Up to ninety percent of total water use occurs during the agricultural phase, leaving brewers with limited influence over irrigation, transport, and cultivation methods.
Scale Matters
Scale plays a decisive role in how sustainable a brewery can be. ‘Not every brewer can simply make their production more sustainable: small breweries emit significantly more CO₂ per liter of beer than large producers,’ Victor explains. While some major brewers manage to reduce their water use to around 2.8 liters per liter of beer, this level of efficiency is much harder to achieve here. ‘Sustainable brewing is often not a matter of willingness, but of scale and efficiency.’
Packaging and transport further increase the environmental footprint. Glass bottles, cans, and kegs can account for up to forty percent of the total CO₂ emissions of beer. As a result, ‘small breweries produce less efficiently and therefore have a higher climate impact per liter of beer,’ Victor says. ‘Where large brewers can invest in energy-saving technologies, small breweries depend on small-scale and often more expensive solutions.’
Creative Sustainability in Practice
Those constraints are tangible at Tipsy Tribe. Sustainability is a conviction deeply embedded in the company. ‘We reuse our waste streams as much as possible,’ says founder Aylin Fastanau. ‘The grains we use go to a local farmer who uses them as animal feed.’ Solar panels cover the roof, and reverse osmosis is used to filter and reuse city water. ‘We reuse the discharged water wherever we can. It’s extra work, but it’s part of who we are.’
Despite these efforts, Aylin acknowledges that sustainability remains challenging at a small scale. ‘Large companies can invest easily; we have to be more creative.’ Certifications, such as organic labels, could help demonstrate sustainable efforts, but they are often financially out of reach. ‘An organic certification is really expensive. We prefer to spend that money on concrete improvements.’
That is why Tipsy Tribe focuses on practical measures such as second-hand installations, reusable packaging boxes, and shared transport with other breweries. ‘We know we can’t be fully sustainable,’ Aylin says. ‘But we try to do a little better every day.’
A Continuous Journey, Not a Destination
The process of brewing beer can be made more sustainable, but full sustainability remains difficult to achieve. This is especially true because the greatest environmental impact lies in agriculture, packaging, and logistics, areas often beyond the brewer’s direct control. Beer will always have an environmental footprint, but as Victors analysis and the Brussels brewery floor show, meaningful improvements are possible, even within tight limits.
