Reducing our Environmental Footprint!

Railway City Brewing Company is concerned about the environment.

We are reducing our environmental footprint by implementing the following strategies:

1. Ask for a draught beer next time you are out at a bar, restaurant or event. When you order draught, you are reducing the amount of packaging that goes into case goods of both bottles and cans. Draught beer is delivered to retailers in returnable kegs. Draught beer is served in the glass, which is also washable and reusable.

2. Ask for a local craft brewed micro-beer. Since they are brewed locally, they reduce transportation pollution and overall cost of shipping. Microbreweries brew beer in smaller batches, thus their actual footprint is much less than the major breweries.

3. We feature refillable 1.9 litre growlers, 15 litre Party Kegs, 20, 30 and 50 litre Kegs. All are 100% refillable and reusable containers with no loss or extra packaging materials.

4. Our refillable glass Growler bottle encourages our customers to reduce, reuse, and recycle. They simply return to the brewery and re-fill at a substantially reduced cost.

5. Our all natural grains will be shared with our local farmers who wish to use the materials to supplement their feed stock.

6. We have incorporated a by-pass Chiller which allows us to capture the excess heat energy from our kettle and save it for our next brew or for our cleaning operation after brew. The system works in such a way that we are ale to run cold water pass our hot wort. We then transfer the heat captured from the wort and fill our hot liquor tank for the next use. We generally are able to increase the base water temperature from 40 degrees up to 100 degrees through this process without any additional energy. We are also able to reduce the temperature of our wort from 212 degrees to 100 degrees.

7. We offer environmentally sound recyclable cups for all of the special events we participate in and feature our product. While we did use Compostable cups made from corn, we found that many events simply did not have the ability to sort and compost. By switching to a recyclable cup, more events will actually recycle enabling more to be diverted from the waste stream.

8. We feature a new 500ml glass bottle! Yes, that is right a GLASS bottle. We will be encouraging all of our patrons to return their glass bottle to the brewery and receive a .25 cent return instead of the traditional .10 at the Beer Store. We want the bottles back, we will re-use them! We anticipate a higher than normal recycle rate and by encouraging you to bring them back to us, we can achieve this together!

Our all natural grains are shared with our local farmers who wish to use the materials to supplement their feed stock.

We have also just started providing them to Annelid Cycle, who are a reputable supplier of “Red Wigglers” composting worms.

I guess their worms really enjoy the fresh spent grains we supply them with as they have come back regularly to pick up a portion of each batch we brew.

These Red Wiggler worms are known for their voracious appetites. These composting worms will quickly convert yard and kitchen waste into a dark, rich compost and will east their own weight in organic material every day!

Their worms castings are an excellent source of organic plant food and are a natural, slow-release and non-burning fertilizer that promotes healthy, vigorous plant growth, and increases yields of larger fruits and vegetables.

Benefits of Worm Composting:

· Reduces organic material

· Diverts waste from landfill

· Indoor, year round recycling

· Quickly converts waste into compost

Benefits of Castings as Fertilizer:

· Laboratory tested quality

· Safe around family and pets

· 100% organic fertilizer

· Does not pollute waterways

· Slow release, non-burning fertilizer

· Promotes healthy plant growth

· Reduces transplant shock

Al helps load another truck load of spent grains from the brewery.  Farmers use the spent grains to supplement their livestock feed.