Planning a Food and Beverage Event for Low Climate Impact

Shade City Brewfest and ClimateHound show how you can drink for the climate and make your festival carbon neutral.

‍Read on to learn how:

• Lost Grove Brewing is celebrating great beer and great climate choices
• Shade City Brewfest (SCB) has reduced its carbon footprint
• ClimateHound is helping to take the SCB’s sustainability to the next level
• Creating carbon neutral food and beverage events can be a great business strategy
• You can make your event more cost-effective, eco-conscious, and FUN

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Lost Grove Brewing is celebrating great beer and great climate choices

Since Lost Grove Brewing opened their doors in 2017, they have prioritized community, quality, and sustainability in everything they do. Every pint of Lost Grove beer, from IPAs to ambers, to sours and stouts, represents an intention to continually find new ways to give back to the community and reduce their impact on the environment. At this Certified B Corporation brewery and taproom in Boise, Idaho, Lost Grove is minimizing its footprint with solar panels on their outdoor tap station, waste reduction, and local sourcing. In 2022, Lost Grove leveled up and became the second brewery to certify as carbon neutral with ClimateHound, a sustainability service committed to reducing the impact of the food and beverage industry. 

Lost Grove has created a beer-loving, planet-loving family around their brewery–and they’re aiming to grow that family with Shade City Brewfest, a 70s-themed celebration of sustainability created with the Treasure Valley Canopy Network and the Idaho Botanical Garden. Timed to coincide with Earth Day, the annual SCB event explores the ways that both businesses and individuals can reduce their impact while sharing great experiences, from local food and drink to live music. 

‍Shade City Brewfest has reduced its carbon footprint

‍Spoiler alert: In 2022, the event avoided more than 7 MTCO2e (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, the most common measure for greenhouse gases) for an event-wide impact reduction of 33.29%!!

An event like SCB can have a big carbon footprint, between single-use supplies like cups and flatware, transportation to the event for staff and attendees, and many other factors. The folks behind SCB decided to make their fest an example of how to do things better with important choices for the inaugural event in 2022:

• Instead of event-provided taster cups, participants were asked to bring their own–and in case they forgot, SCB bought used cups from local thrift stores. The savings? A total cost of $300, instead of about $12,000 for commemorative cups, and a carbon footprint reduction of 6.36 MTCO2e!!
• Reusable flatware and plates only cost $300, vs $1,200 for compostables that still would have produced over half a tonne of CO2e. The reusable goods were cleaned on site at a dishwashing station managed by SCB’s friends at Roots Zero Waste Market.
• Event staff who chose to leave their cars at home were offered free beer tickets to use after their shifts. This yielded about 35 bicyclists per day and a reduction of  approximately 0.14 MTCO2e (vs. driving an individual passenger vehicle), which was a 16.8% reduction of total employee commuting impact.
• An incentive of additional beer tickets for attendees who opted not to drive yielded about 250 bicyclists per day and reduced the environmental impact of SCB participants by just over 1 MTCO2e. The fest also provided information on bus routes and other alternative transportation options. While this avoided impact falls outside of the three scopes considered in carbon footprint calculations and was not included in the spoiler stats, it’s still a great way to reduce impact and embody the fest’s values.
• With the help of Brigade Screenprinting, Shade City t-shirts were printed on site and on demand to eliminate waste, and promotional event posters were printed on the back of old posters or on recycled paper. 

SCB is building on these efforts with more reduction strategies, sustainable choices, and community partnerships for 2023.

• Staffing trash stations with volunteers to ensure trash, recycling, and compost are sorted correctly
• City of Good is providing the volunteer platform and volunteers to support the event
• Partnering with Lime electric bikes and scooters to provide discounted rides and increased access to alternative transportation

‍ClimateHound is helping to take the SCB’s sustainability to the next level

The choices above are examples of the thoughtful planning process behind SCB: the event partners made sustainability a priority in all their decision-making. With a happening on the scale of this popular fest, though, it can be impossible to achieve carbon neutrality through good choices alone. Thanks to Lost Grove Brewing’s experience in certifying through ClimateHound, they knew that the next step would be to develop a solid, science-backed calculation of the event’s footprint and pursue additional strategies for offsetting SCB’s impact.

Through ClimateHound’s easy-to-use online platform and industry-specific knowledge base, SCB has calculated its footprint for 2022, and has certified the 2023 fest as carbon neutral. SCB is offsetting its impact by funding clean cookstove placements in Nicaragua through ClimateHound’s relationship with StoveTeam International. 

In the future, the brewfest and other ClimateHound clients may be able to offset their impact through another SCB partner: The Treasure Valley Canopy Network is in talks to offer their City Forest Credits exclusively through ClimateHound. These fully vetted urban forestry carbon credits result from Treasure Valley Canopy Network’s collaboration with City Forest Credits. By planting new trees across Idaho’s Treasure Valley, the program helps to sequester carbon in the atmosphere AND creates ecosystem benefits to the City of Boise, including: clean air, clean water, and reduced urban heat island effects.

To bring more breweries into the ClimateHound pack, those participating in SCB have been offered a special opportunity to access the company’s platform for a full year and assess their sustainability. If you’re attending the fest, look for special signage at brewery booths that will tell you whether they’ve completed the carbon footprint analysis process and begun taking steps to reduce their impact (ClimateHound’s “Eco-Conscious” designation) or gone all the way to certifying as carbon neutral. 

‍Creating carbon neutral food and beverage events can be a great business strategy

Shade City Brewfest and ClimateHound are pioneering a path forward for carbon neutral food and beverage events, one that can offer great results for both the planet AND the planners’ bottom line. Minimizing your event’s footprint can lead to decreases in expense and waste and increases in good branding and good vibes:

• As more and more companies make sustainability part of their messaging and culture, sponsors will be drawn to events that highlight their commitment to carbon neutrality.
• The same is true for the growing number of consumers (especially younger generations) who want to put their money where their values are.
• Media outlets looking for sustainability content are likely to give more attention AND love to events that offer an important story, beyond the festival fun.
• The SCB’s promotion of bringing your own cups shows how you can cut costs AND environmental impact while transforming your attendees into partners in achieving carbon neutrality. 

‍You can make your event more cost-effective, eco-conscious, and FUN

Beyond the examples offered by SCB on how to plan for a carbon neutral event, consider the following:

• Are there venue options equipped with alternative energy, like solar panels?
• Will a plant-based menu meet the expectations of your attendees? 
• Can you offer sustainably sourced meat options?
• Can you reduce your supply chain by getting your goods for the event locally?
• For annual events, how can you reuse signage and other materials from year to year? 

Even if you already make the best possible choices in planning your event, it’s still important to calculate your carbon footprint–you can’t manage what you haven’t measured!–and offset any emissions that can’t be reduced directly. An expert assessment of your emissions can reveal surprising opportunities to minimize your footprint AND your costs.  A partner like ClimateHound can make the process easy, even as you juggle the many demands of creating an incredible experience for your attendees. The steps you take toward carbon neutrality will give you and your guests another reason to celebrate!

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