Our home planet: Spaceship Earth

Futurist Buckminster Fuller was right in his observation that there is no Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Even without that manual, we recognize that resources are finite and our ship is fragile. In our brewery and taproom, we do our best to protect our home planet.

Clean energy

Our building is solar-powered. The entire roof of 120 N. Meadows Road is covered in solar panels that power our building and feed back to the grid. This means that clean power is energizing everything from our giant rice steamer to LED lights.

We keep our supply chain as small as we can. Our biggest supply is rice, which we order 4 metric tons of at a time. Not only is our supplier a single-family farm committed to sustainability but they are also located in Arkansas, which is vastly closer to us than Californian farms. Our bottles are manufactured in the U.S. rather than imported from overseas. These choices mean fewer fossil fuels are used in transporting ingredients and packaging to us.

We avoid unnecessary plastics. We give samples of our sake at restaurants, bars, liquor stores, and customers as part of our sales calls. We stock our sales bags with compostable tasting cups made from corn, rather than disposable plastic cups. Similarly, we use corn-based trash bags in the taproom. All the stuff from the gear store is shipped in compostable mailers or recyclable boxes, and glassware purchased in the taproom gets wrapped in recycled paper.

Clean products

We use natural products whenever we can. The castile soap in the restrooms smells great, rinses off cleanly, and is diluted because we use a soap foamer. Back in the brewery, we’re cleaning all the time, and much of that cleaning is done with ozonated water.

All the little things add up. If we cooperate and collaborate as a unified crew, we will be able to navigate our Spaceship Earth into a better tomorrow. Happy Earth Day!