The Shout Magazine (New Zealand)

Kiwi beer brand gets eco-friendly make-over

Kiwi beer brand Export has unveiled a new look with more environmentally-friendly bottles and packaging.

The change will see Export swap from plastic to paper labels and shift to locally supplied carton board boxes in a move that will make its packaging 100% recyclable and will decrease the brand’s total carbon emissions.

The reduction is the equivalent of approximately 600 return flights from Auckland to Queenstown per year.

DB says moving to paper labels means 45,275 kg of plastic will no longer be going to landfill each year.

The changes also mean that 11,881 kgs of ink will be saved a year, plus moving the supply of paper for carton board boxes to a local supplier will save thousands of kilometres in travel and result in a significant carbon emission reduction.

“To the individual, these may seem like simple changes to the bottles and packs, but considering Export is the third largest beer brand in New Zealand and represents one in every 10 litres of beer sold, the environmental benefits of this move are significant,” says Peter Simons, Managing Director at DB Breweries.

“Aligned with the draft advice of the Climate Change Commission, we believe that, as a brewer, we need to make meaningful change in our value chain to actively reduce our carbon footprint by taking real action and not just buying carbon offsets.

“As a company DB has set an ambitious goal to halve our carbon footprint by 2030 (from a 2018 baseline) and move to 100% renewable energy sources for our breweries by 2030.

“This has started already in 2021 by switching from coal to renewable biomass at our brewery in Timaru and Export’s commitment and changes are another important step towards this goal,” says Simons.

The new Export bottles and packs will be on shelves in the coming weeks.

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