Canada's Greenest Employers (2025) - Flipbook - Page 70
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CANADA'S GREENEST EMPLOYERS (2025)
Employees focus on green efforts at Sleeman Breweries
T
here are few
businesses greener
than making beer. It
starts with just four
basic ingredients:
“malt, hops, yeast and water,”
according to Linden Gossen,
national environmental health
and safety manager at Sleeman
Breweries. But beyond that, he
says, there are so many opportunities to strive for an even more
environmentally friendly product.
in each of their plants and
warehouses. These range from
regular checks for leaks in water
lines and air pipes and upgrading
a bottle pasteurizer with a newer,
more efficient piece of equipment
to equipping their delivery fleet
with routing software that
maximizes efficient delivery
routes.
When the company did a waste
audit of the business several years
ago, it had a diversion rate from
landfill of 60 per cent, higher than
a goal that the province of Ontario,
for instance, had set for industries
but not, Gossen says, unusual for
the brewery business.
“But when we started to focus
and see the opportunities to
maximize that, our diversion rate
went to 97 or 98 per cent. That
doesn’t happen without focus.
There are natural aspects of
brewing that are green, but if you
want to achieve something
significant, you have to work for
it.”
Anik Henderson works at
Sleeman’s brewery in Chambly,
where she leads the local green
team. She says initiatives there
include stations to collect
consumables like gloves and
masks, getting rid of disposable
utensils and dinnerware in the
cafeteria in favour of dishwashers,
and issuing reusable water bottles
to employees.
“By mobilizing the entire plant,
we’ve created a culture of
sustainability,” Henderson says.
“Working on the green team
helped me see myself as an agent
of change.”
This active workplace culture
has reaped rewards for Sleeman
Breweries, like the BC Hydro
Clean Energy Champion Award,
and Recyc-Québec’s Elite Status.
Events organized for Earth Month
Working on the green team
helped me see myself as an
agent of change.
— Anik Henderson
Green Team Leader, Chambly
Sleeman, which makes beer
across the country, from its
headquarters in Guelph, Ont., to
plants in Chambly, Que., Calgary,
Alta. and Vernon, B.C., has a
commitment to meeting not just
local regulations but its own
rigorous standards.
There are the “endlessly
recyclable” glass bottles and
aluminum cans that leave the
plants, and the ingredients left
over from brewing, which are used
for animal feed. “Those opportunities are there in the type of
business we’re in,” Gossen says.
“But without a more concerted
focus, green efforts don’t just
happen by themselves.”
To that end, Sleeman Breweries
has local green teams in each of its
breweries, overseen by a national
green team. Gossen describes how,
working together, they’ve steadily
made incremental improvements
Linden Gossen, national environmental health and safety manager at Sleeman Breweries, stands in front of
compressed cardboard ready for recycling.
