In 2020, pubs were forced to remain shut due to the pandemic, meaning owners were stuck with beer they couldn’t sell. 87 million pints had already been poured down the drain.

But expired beer can be turned into electricity, fertiliser, animal feed. What was considered waste was actually a resource we could use to help communities recover post-pandemic.

Our strategy was to completely reverse Heineken’s business model.

The Unwasted Beer turned 28 million expired pints into power for 61,687 homes, 4600 tonnes of fertiliser and animal feed. These were part sold to suppliers, part donated to the community.

Food and drink waste is a major environmental issue.

Pre-covid, 1.3 trillion tons of food went to landfills each year. Beyond polluting our planet, it also creates between 6 and 10% of all global greenhouse emissions (Deloitte, 2021; Our World in Data, 2020)

Covid-19 made the situation far worse. As global supply chains ground to a halt, billions of tons of food goods began to deteriorate, creating a food waste crisis.

A keg of beer has a shelf-life of 120 days. In 2020, with bars being forced to remain shut, owners were forced to pour 87 millions of pints of beer down the drain in the UK alone - an estimated loss of £331 million in revenue (British Beer & Pub Association, 2021).

The situation was catastrophic.

Bars were haemorrhaging money at a critical moment and adding to the food waste crisis.

Something had to be done.

Sustainability and responsibility sit at the heart of Heineken’s business.

Heineken has publicly pledged to become carbon neutral in its beer production by 2030.

Moreover, the company made a commitment at the start of the pandemic to help save bars worldwide.

To this end, Heineken had already launched #BackTheBars, a global initiative to help save bars by keeping them alive in people’s minds at a time when they were being forgotten - with activations such as Shutter Ads.

Our task was clear.

To save bars, maintain the on-trade’s trust in Heineken and to fulfil our environmental commitments, we needed to stop millions more pints from being poured down the drain.

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How do you repurpose beer?

That was the question we posed to an international panel of environmental experts and Heineken’s sustainability experts.

The answers surprised us.

Even once expired, beer has a multitude of uses.

Biofuel. Fertiliser. Plastics. Animal feed. Hand sanitiser.

Bartenders were throwing their expired beer away because they believed it was worthless.

But with just a few modifications to our production chain, spent beer could easily be transformed into a sustainable resource.

Expired beer wasn’t waste. It was a resource we could harness to help communities get back on their feet again.

Ideating alongside environmental experts and engineers, we set out to repurpose beer into a tool to help kickstart communities’, bars’ and Heineken’s recovery.

Expired beer could be transformed into a sustainable resource to help communities recover post-pandemic.

Heineken reversed their business model, buying back €8 million of beer from bars across markets and transformed it into sustainable solutions and resources for the community.

Our experts designed and created a ‘beer saving station’ to convert 15 million pints of expired beer into biogas by fermenting it in a digester.

This process also produces a valuable nutrient-rich fertiliser - of which Heineken was able to produce 4,600 tonnes.

This was part donated to the local community, part sold back to our suppliers.

13 million pints of beer were transformed into animal feed.

This wasn’t just a smart use of a waste product - animals fed with beer grains also emit 13% less greenhouse gases (ILVO, 2020).

All our initiatives were communicated through a series of tactical outdoors in the communities we were able to help.

In total, we bought back over 28 million expired pints (19 million in Ireland, 9 million in England). Using innovative technologies, we generated enough sustainable power to heat 61,687 homes and produce 4,600 tonnes of fertiliser for our suppliers and the local community.

The initiatives had huge PR value for Heineken, with an earned reach of over 67 million. Meanwhile, our media spend was tiny - just enough to cover a series of billboards.

Heineken grew to position 16 out of 589 companies within the Food Products industry group of Morning Star’s Sustainalytics rankings.

Heineken also enjoyed a measurable growth in trust from the on-trade.

On average, our bar partners in markets were 4.9% more satisfied with Heineken in 2021 versus 2019 (Madison 2021).

The Unwasted Beer project survives globally. Heineken continues to look for new uses for its spent beer, and beer by-products.