Environmental practice adoption in UK brewing sector

Abstract

The adoption of environmental sustainability practices in manufacturing has the potential to reduce cost, improve resilience and enable business development. Despite the wealth of available practices and their accepted advantages, the rate of adoption is patchy. Much is known about the leaders in this space but leaders by definition are a minority. There is a gap on how the broader industry base is changing and what could help and what hinders their advance. This paper documents research on a single tier of a largely homogenous sector. Through site visits and workshops a picture is created of how brewers are managing their operations and how they can enhance their environmental performance. The contribution of this paper is a novel model to characterize how a sector is adopting practices, what is hindering advance and how the community of like-minded leaders are supporting each other. The work complements the literature on what leaders have done to advance.