Our mission:
• To minimise our overall environmental footprint on our natural environment.
Bright’s beautiful weather and mountainous terrain was the reason our founders made the tree-change to the High Country in the early 2000s.
The rich natural environment that surrounds the Bright, the mountain-fed water of the Ovens River, the close proximity to the hop growing region of the Ovens Valley, and the awesome outdoor lifestyle that the region provides is why Bright Brewery exists today.
“We put a brewery here in Bright because we love the rich natural environment that surrounds the town and the awesome outdoor lifestyle that it provides,” explains Bright Brewery founder and owner Scott Brandon.
“The environment is one of the biggest drivers of Bright’s economy, regularly drawing many visitors here across the seasons for the spectacular scenery and alpine adventures, so it is imperative for us to do our part in sustaining it
“Playing our part in helping to sustain the environment that surrounds us is at the heart of our operations and one of our core values. We seek to be genuinely environmentally conscious in our organisational culture and business approach.
Here are just some of the other sustainable measures you’ll find around Bright Brewery:
- Solar brewing – In 2017 we installed 50kW of solar on the roof of our Great Alpine Road venue, which was enough to power all of our energy needs when we were operating on a single site. With the expansion of our brewing facilities to Fred’s Shed, we also needed to expand our solar PV system to help meet our increased brewing capacity – and energy use. So in 2023, we commissioned a 171kw solar system (the solar array system includes 381 panels!) at our Fed’s Brewery Facility, giving us a combined 221kw system. Over it’s lifetime, our solar system has generated 426,527 kWh and saved 7, 712 trees (as at February 2023). Read more about our solar brewing here.
- Reduce, reuse recycle – around the brewery, you’ll find many repurposed items including old kegs as wash basins and seats, plastic kegs as bins, and pallets as tables and dividers.
- Bright Brewery rolled out a national recycling scheme for Paktech beer can handles in bottleshops across the country. Beer lovers can drop any plastic Paktech beer handles into the bins – from any brewery – to ensure that they are recycled correctly.
- We recognise that our commercial-scale breweries are highly energy and water intensive, so we attempt to mitigate this impact by brewing as sustainably as possible with back to back brews, which recycles the existing heat that has been generated.
- Our Green Transport Scheme encourages employees to walk, cycle, run, or even paraglide to work instead of driving. Employees are rewarded for every commute they make without a car.
- Our beer is a genuine low food-mile product! The water comes from the snow-fed water of the Ovens River, which flows past our brewery; some of the hops are grown 10 minutes down the road at the Rostrevor Hop Gardens; 64% of the malt we use for brewing comes from Victoria; and, most of all, 25% of our beer is consumed at our venue located in Bright!
- Green freight – when one of our customers in Bright places a small order for our beers, we load up a trolley and walk the beer to them!
- Our brewery grain is transported directly from the brewery to a nearby farm where it’s fed to cows owned by local farmers. Watch the video here.
- We have installed an on-site mechanical composting machine (ORCA) next to our commercial kitchen. We process approximately 192kg of organic food waste every week, which equates to roughly 1 tonne of food waste not going into landfill every year.
- Shredded office paper is used by staff to line chicken laying boxes or as padding for fragile packages that we ship from our brewery.
- We subscribe to The Last Straw initiative and have removed plastic
straws from our venue.
- We run a used battery collection point at Bright Brewery and these batteries are recycled through an approved recycling centre regularly.
- We no longer use plastic cling wrap in our kitchen and have swapped to a 100% compostable alternative called Great Wrap – made from potato waste.
Cheers to sustainable beer!