Our Sustainability

At the Cayman Islands Brewery, we are committed to advancing our sustainability focus and supporting the local community. From our long-term commitment to re-using our beer bottles, recycling cans, cardboard, wastewater and spent grains, to donating to Marine conservation and other important local charities via sponsorships.

We are always working towards three focus areas: reducing carbon intensity, waste prevention, and local giving, especially for environmental initiatives.

Sustainability is a big challenge as the population continues to grow in the Cayman Islands. As the population rises we are committed to continuously educate the population on the importance of being a sustainable company.

BOTTLE RECYCLING +

At Caybrew, we proudly reuse our bottles to help save the environment. We offer CI$4 for each case of our empty bottles (CI$0.15 for singles). These can be returned to either the Caybrew Taproom or any Blackbeards liquor store and Jacques Scott liquor store. The bottles are then cleaned, sanitized, inspected, and refilled with more of our premium local beer.

Each bottle can be reused more than 15 times! Returnable glass bottles have a 92% lower carbon footprint than glass recycling and produce 85% lower emissions than single-use glass!

Help us to save our bottles. After purchasing one of our refreshing bottled beers, please drink, enjoy and return!

You can check the Blackbeard's Location here or Jacques Scott's Location here.

For Taproom hours and directions

*refund to be given against your next purchase

"HELP US TO REDUCE THE GLASS WASTE, HELP US TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT"

WASTE PREVENTION

"Despite significant improvement over the last 20 years, water consumption and wastewater disposal remain environmental and economic hurdles that directly affect breweries and the brewing process"
Brewers Association. (2017). WATER & WASTEWATER SUSTAINABILITY MANUAL.

At the Cayman Islands Brewery the staff work hard to conserve water and energy. We repurpose and recycle items such as cans, plastic, cardboard and paper; our focus is on sourcing the most environmentally friendly products available to market. In our journey to zero waste, we sent244 tons of spent grain to local farms, we get just under 300,000 bottles back a year to reuse and generate nitrogen to reduce usage of Co2. Our current goal is to remove our total waste from the landfill by 2022.

In 2017, we completed our first Life Cycle Analysis on a bottle of beer produced at our brewery, this helped us to understand the biggest opportunities to reduce our carbon footprint! A life cycle analysis is a technique to assess the environmental impacts with all the stages of making beer from the raw material extraction, to processing, manufacturing, distribution, repairs & maintenance and recycling. Each year our aim is to reduce it as much as possible.

CARBON INTENSITY

At the Cayman Islands Brewery, 50% of the brewing process is now using our own generated N2, therefore this has significantly reduced our need for imported CO2. This is a major achievement in our goal to minimize our carbon footprint.

In order to reduce our electricity dependency, we have been working closely with the energy efficiency companies on Island.

To analyze our carbon foot print for a serving of beer we broke down the following:

Ingredients 36%
Electricity 26%
Equipment 13%
Travel and freight 10%
Packaging 10%
Fermentation 5%

Once we understand the percentages of these elements, we can look at cutting emissions.

For example:
Draft beer is the most environmentally friendly product we produce at present, followed by bottles in returnable crates, then cans, and finally bottles in cardboard cartons.

RESOURCE PROTECTION

As it takes 10 gallons of water to produce one gallon of beer, we are committed to finding ways to reduce the amount of water we use to produce our beer. Our water usage per gallon of beer is now below 7 gallons. We have instigated a reclamation system from our RO unit, as well as a cooling tower, recycle loop from our pasteurizer, resulting in a 30% reduction in water usage.

"The production phase is where most of the water is used. At 95% of today’s breweries, making one barrel of beer uses 3-7 barrels of water" says Bart Watson, chief economist of the Brewers Association.

We are now in line with industry standards, but we are continuing to look at ways to further reduce our waste consumption.

LOCAL GIVING & COMMUNITY

We created the brewery on a platform of environmental consciousness and community enhancement. In the founding years, it was a tough struggle, to create an environment of recycling and repurposing, and creating the funds from a fledgeling company to donate to many worthy charities. Since 2007 we have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the local community and marine conservation and continue to work closely with these organisations. Wework closely with the GHOF and Department of Environment and donate regularly to help tag and protect White Tip Sharks.

During the last 10 years our mission has grown each year with our sales growth, and we now support local charities, sports teams and national events throughout the year.

One of our most successful donation schemes is our tour token. For every tour purchased the customer is presented with a token valued at CI$1, this is to be deposited in one of the CIB charity boxes. The current charities include:

One dog at a time
Cancer Society Cayman
Alzheimer’s Cayman
Meals on Wheels

We also support several local charities and events throughout the year and these include.

Batabanoo carnival
Pirates Week
Cayman Cook out
CayFilm
Winter Fest
Taste of Cayman

Marine conservation
In 2012 we launched the first beer dedicated to Marine Conservation. Since the inception we have raised thousands of dollars for the Department of Environment and more recently, Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation after Guy donated a drawing for use on our White Tip Lager packaging. The total amount raised as at November 2017 was $190,000 and continues to climb.

Our Sustainability