Heineken aims to reduce carbon emissions through new scheme

Heineken has committed to a new sustainability scheme called ‘Drop the C’, as the brand aims to drastically reduce its carbon emissions and use more renewable electricity to power its plants.

Currently, 14% of the energy the brand uses to power its plants is derived from renewable sources, and Heineken claims it wants to increase this figure to 70% by 2030.

The brand claims it has already reached its 2020 emissions targets, as carbon emissions from the brand’s plants have fallen 41% relative to hectolitres of beer produced since 2008.

Emissions also fell 7% in absolute terms, despite the fact that beer production rose 57% in this time period.

New emissions goals will also be set for distribution, cooling and for packaging over the next two years as part of the programme.

Heineken says it will collaborate with industry partners, suppliers, governments, customers and consumers to achieve these targets.

Jean-François van Boxmeer, CEO of Heineken International said: “With all the good progress made in reducing our CO2 emissions, now is the right time to set ourselves new targets.

“When I visit our breweries I want to see that we are brewing with real green energy and that we are not achieving our reduction targets by buying unbundled certificates.

“Beyond production, distribution and cooling, we are also going to take a close look at our packaging, because it represents a significant portion of our carbon footprint.

“Packaging is an area where reductions will be harder to achieve because we simply cannot do this alone. We invite our business partners and others to work with us to reduce emissions across our business.”