Bira 91, India’s fastest-growing beer brand, marked Earth Day 2022 by announcing the launch of their ‘Mission To Zero’.

The brewer is aiming to become India’s first Net Zero beer company by 2025.

More than seven pints of Bira 91 are enjoyed every second and as the company scales up, Bira 91 aims to brew not only the most flavorful beers on the planet, but also the greenest beers.

The company is doubling down on its sustainability efforts with initiatives that will help create a real, measurable impact. By 2025, every Bira 91 brewery will have zero carbon emissions.

Commenting on Mission to Zero, Ankur Jain, Founder and CEO, Bira 91, said, “Today’s consumers do not only want to drink flavorful beers, but also want to make better choices for the community and the planet.” He continues “We are investing in our manufacturing and supply chain to ensure that our breweries reach zero carbon emissions by 2025 – 5 years ahead of other global beer makers.”

Last year, Kirin Holdings invested in a minority stake of B9 (Bira 91’s parent company), subsequently both the companies partnered to form the B9 – Kirin Centre for Sustainable Growth. This initiative is focused on environment sustainability and other business synergies. As a result, the centre kicked off its Net Zero project last year to create an aggressive roadmap to become carbon neutral by 2025.

Bira 91’s roadmap to be India’s first net zero beer company

Sharing his perspective, Hiromasa Honda, Managing Director, Kirin Holdings Singapore, said, “A key pillar of Kirin’s philosophy is ‘Creating Shared Value’ (CSV). As part of this focus, the Kirin group strives to create social and economic value together with all of its stakeholders and work to grow sustainably with society. Kirin has identified the environment as one of its four key CSV issues. We are glad to share our expertise and support Bira 91’s commitment to become carbon neutral so early in its lifecycle. Team Kirin shares Bira 91’s ambition towards being India’s first Net Zero beer company and will continuously engage in various initiatives that can help them reach this goal.”

As a part of its extensive to-do list to achieve this goal, Bira 91 has laid out four key areas to accomplish their Mission To Zero:

Shift to 100% Clean Energy
The company is now Zero Coal across all breweries. It will also minimize buying electricity made by burning coal or natural gas, generate 10 MW of electricity from solar panels by 2025 and install off-grid wind turbines to light-up their administrative facilities and streets

Consume 60% Less Energy
Bira 91 will invest in equipment to ensure that all the surplus heat from its breweries is recovered and converted into reusable energy and improve every small step (from mill to mash, boil to ferment, filter to pack) making them “smarter, faster and better”. They also aim to deploy the latest advances in brewing, packaging, automation, AI and advanced robotics to help remove waste, improve efficiencies, and reduce energy consumption

Use 50% Less Water
In a bid to “Recycle, Reduce and Reuse” Bira 91 will cut its water usage by half through treating and converting 100% of waste-water into clean water which is then used for refrigeration, watering trees and generating steam. Reduce evaporation during brewing and make processes such as cleaning of glass bottles smarter and build closed-loop processes so that no water is lost after using it for the first-time and can be reused multiple times

Send Zero Waste to Landfill
Bira 91 currently sends 100% of their spent grain for use as animal feed and some of it is also used to make bio-degradable cups. 95% of the packaging material that is used to make Bira 91 beers is recyclable, by 2024 the target is 99%. Anything that can be recycled, will be – broken glass, damaged cartons, wasted cans, or any other waste generated in the beer-making process.

Bira 91 hope their mission will spur others in the industry to follow their lead “We believe that carbon emissions are the greatest challenge being faced by this generation and our hopeful that our Mission To Zero will spark a revolution – one in which every beer made in the country is carbon neutral.” Ankur Jain