JENNIFER SILVERBERG
Sure, you already love Urban Chestnut (three locations, including 4465 Manchester Avenue). Now the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is giving you another excuse to support the local brewer: The agency recently recognized the brewery for its sustainability efforts.
The EPA named Urban Chestnut "Small Business Partner of the Year" on its 2017 list of national WasteWise Award Winners. The WasteWise program acknowledges organizations that put significant effort into preventing and diverting waste.
Urban Chestnut was one of sixteen organizations to be recognized for its 2017 efforts.“Sustainability has been a major focus of Urban Chestnut’s business plan since our inception in 2011,” the company's quality assurance manager, Kurt Driesner, said in a press release. “Whenever possible, sustainable designs and processes are implemented at the point of installation.”
The effort shows: according to the release, Urban Chestnut has earned the only Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification (silver) for a brewery in Missouri. In 2016. Urban Chestnut also diverted or repurposed between 96 and 97 percent of its waste — including 28,000 pounds of wood pallets and roughly 1.1 million pounds of spent grain.
Urban Chestnut also furthered its sustainability efforts last year by partnering with Center Ethanol in Sauget. To date, the companies have prevented about 400,000 pounds of spent yeast from entering the municipal waste stream.
“This is yet another excellent example of the EPA partnering with communities and organizations to achieve environmental and economic benefits through waste prevention and management," EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said in a statement. "The WasteWise award winners have exemplified tremendous environmental stewardship and fiscal responsibility, and we commend their efforts."
We'll drink to that.
