What Concrete Companies Can Learn from Beer

A recent article by the chief supply officer of 
Anheuser-Busch InBev, Claudio Braz Ferro, highlights steps to build a culture of sustainability to achieve environmental goals. As we have noticed, sustainability has captured the attention of much of the world over the last few years. Trends suggest that companies with "sustainable" supply chains significantly outperformed their counterparts in terms of both stock market and accounting criteria. 

The concrete industry faces some of the same challenges as the brewing industry, notes NRMCA's Tien Peng. Challenges range from the age and capabilities of equipment to the variety in quality and supply of natural resources. It takes between five and more than 100 liters of water to make one liter of beer depending on the location and plant. This often means that implementing a "one-size-fits-all" green solution is often impossible.

The author believes that incentivizing and challenging their colleagues to make changes wherever they could – large and small, in each of their more than 140 facilities – was the only way to reach their three-year targets. The authors shares his steps for achieving a sustainable culture:

1. Elevate sustainability initiatives to the same level as other business-critical functions

2. Encourage global best practice sharing, tailored to local conditions

3. Empower employees to continually drive improvement

By sharing the responsibility for achieving sustainability targets with all colleagues and empowering them to make changes, businesses will be able to achieve a level of commitment and performance that wouldn’t be otherwise possible, he says.