From Maine, With Love - An Allagash Brewing Podcast
We’re lucky here at Allagash Brewing to be surrounded by interesting people who love what they do. So we wanted to share a little slice of our brewery life, and the work of our nonprofit partners, by getting together to talk about things we’re passionate about. Our goal is to give you insight into what it's like to work and live here in Portland, Maine, with some beer thrown in for fun. Thanks for listening!
From Maine, With Love - An Allagash Brewing Podcast
S1 Episode 3: The Green Team
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In which Zoe Malia, our Green Team leader and Sustainability Coordinator, and Tom Halstead, our former Green Team leader, talk about all things Sustainability. Come for tips on how you can build sustainable practices in any business, stay for Tom’s favorite movie to watch at a drive-in.
This is From Maine, With Love an Allagash brewing podcast, where we talk about beer, our community here in Maine and things that generally make us happy. So to celebrate earth month here at the brewery, we wanted to talk about sustainability or rather how we're constantly working to be more sustainable. And so we're gonna talk about that with a few members of our green team here at Allagash. And today I am very lucky to be joined by Zoe, Malia , our sustainability coordinator, and Tom Halstead , our inventory manager . I'm Brett. I work on the marketing team here at Allagash. I wanna ask Zoe, you have an open weekend in Maine. Where are you heading?
Zoe MaliaOh , that is a really hard question to answer. Yes, honestly, I think I have two spots that come to my mind. Can I have two? Is that all right ? Yes,
Brett WillisYou can have two.
Zoe MaliaAll right . Um , so first spot I think is Camden Rockland area. I went there for my birthday last year. It was absolutely gorgeous. Good food, good drink. Beautiful. Second spot that came to my mind was Cutler coast area. Quite a ways away, but I did to do some hiking up there. Um, I actually stayed on a kelp farm, a kelp and blueberry farm when I was up there. Oh . And it was absolutely gorgeous. So yeah, I think those are my weekend getaway.
Brett WillisThat's amazing. Cutler Coast like how far up is that? I don't even know if I've heard of that.
Zoe MaliaUh , I think it's , maybe it's like a four and a half , five hour drive, I believe. So . It's a ways , ways away, but that is up there. Yeah. You gotta get out there. Yeah. Yeah.
Brett WillisAll right . Tom, different question for you. Uh, who is the best actor to play King Lear in Shakespeare's King Lear?
Tom HalsteadUh , actually when I was in high school, we did king Lear and I was king. No , I'm just kidding.
Brett WillisObviously McLellan . No, that's not the question. I was just trying to think some really random, no, actually I do. I do have a semi like media-related question and I think you , I thought you'd have an interesting answer. So what is the best movie to see at a drive-in theater?
Tom HalsteadThat is a really hard question. I think you have, have to go with a scary movie. Mm . Uh , cuz it's, you know, it's that eerie feeling it's nighttime, but you also could go with kind of like a funny, scary movie mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. I think any type of like scary movie or funny, scary movie. Um, if you're, if you're on a date situation, if you're with the family, it's gotta be straight up Disney or Pixar kind of comedy.
Brett WillisYeah. That's a great call. I was thinking like Ghostbusters for some reason, I feel like that could, that's kind of that funny. Scary. Not too scary.
Tom HalsteadI dig it. There's a giant marshmallow man. That's pretty scary.
Brett WillisYep . That's true. It's cute and scary somehow. <laugh> um, so actually Tom I'll , I'll give you, I'll give you the question that I was gonna give you. What , what's your, what's your , uh , stop in Maine on the weekend? What would you like to go to?
Tom HalsteadI was thinking about this question and it is pretty difficult. So I'm also gonna pick two, but I'm gonna go seasonally. If it's the one warmer seasons you want to head to the coast, you wanna be on the beach, on the water somewhere, you know, mm-hmm <affirmative> and once fall hits , uh , you gotta head towards the New Hampshire border hit up those mountains. Yeah . Beautiful foliage. You gotta check it out. Do some hiking. That's what I think.
Brett WillisI love it. Well, thank you both. That is, that is like a legit hard question. That's hopefully the hardest question we'll get out of this entire podcast. So I guess we'll start and I'll , I'll let, whoever feels like they're most comfortable answering it, answer it. What is a green team?
Tom HalsteadSo what is green team? It can be different things to different people, different businesses. I think everyone's gonna have their own definition of what a green team is. Hmm . And there's some other businesses that have different color teams, a blue team , um , you know, does the same type of thing, just a different name, but essentially it's it's uh , for us it's a group of passionate people , um, that care about specific , uh, environmental causes that we would say mm-hmm , <affirmative> specific things that might affect the brewery environmental concerns for the brewing industry. Sure. But it's also kind of an idea factory. I would call it for people that have, you know, thoughts about how we could be doing things better, thoughts about how we could be doing things in our community just general like, Hey, this would be cool to try. Why don't we try it? So I think for the most part for us, we get as many passionate people together as possible to come up with ideas and to decide what we want to learn about , uh , what we want to , you know, try and make better what wanna do better as a company and in our community.
Brett WillisI love it. How many people are on our green team right now? Do you know?
Tom HalsteadI should know this. Uh <laugh> Zoe's the new captain. She should know.
Zoe Malia<laugh> I should know. You're right. <laugh>
Brett WillisWhile , while you're looking it up while you're thinking about it , actually that's I feel like that's an important piece of information. So Tom has led our green team for the past, like what, four years?
Tom HalsteadSomewhere around there. I inherited it from Luke Truman who is still officially unofficially , uh , on the green team. Mm-hmm <affirmative> as our facilities manager, he interacts with it quite a bit.
Brett WillisYeah, totally. And then Zoe has recently taken up the mantle as leader of the green team.
Zoe MaliaYes, I have. Yeah, I've been in the tasting room for over four years, but just recently took on the role of the sustainability coordinator. So I'll be taking it over super excited.
Brett WillisIt's it's very exciting.
Zoe MaliaSo I just looked it up and I , I believe we have about 10 people and it , it , I think from talking to Tom, it kind of fluctuates since it's been like eight people, 10 people mm-hmm <affirmative> and it does rotate the members on the team . And so sometimes, you know, as people are rotated out, we're still gonna keep them on our email thread. Um, which I don't think Tom mentioned, but we are always bouncing ideas off of each other all the time as Brett , you know,
Brett WillisI , I think that's totally right where it's like, it is just kind of a way for us to, if we see something cool in the newspaper, I'll, I'll full disclosure. I'm also on the green team. Uh, so I've been on the green team for like four years. But the idea is that if you see something out there, like an article that's, inspiring or maybe not so inspiring or whatever it might be, I think it's, it's a team that, you know, is full of interested people who want to help the brewery be more sustainable , uh , in all the things we're doing.
Tom Halstead<affirmative> . And I think the goal has always been to have at least one person from each department , um, just to really spread out the knowledge. And it was always important to me, for an employee to know who to ask if they have a green-related question. And if you have a person in your department that you work with and see every day and you can go ask them your question, and if they don't know, they can, you know, reach out and they know who to reach out to, but it does fluctuate a little bit, depending on how busy we are and who can make it, you know, month to month and stuff like that. But, and it can be different because we've always tried to have a salesperson on the green team and, you know, they're all over the country. So a lot of time it's remote calling in and stuff like that. And you know, that used to be a weird thing to do before COVID hit, you know, doing any type of remote call was just always kind of, how do we handle this? How does this work?
Brett Willis<laugh> yeah , like just as an additional point on that too, it just has been so helpful in bringing different buy-in from across the company as well, where like, if everyone was located on one team, like production, or sales, you know, of course you'd get fewer ideas, but you'd also have less buy-in about the holistic How do you make this thing happen? How do you communicate it? Like whatever the, the goal that we pick as a green team.
Zoe MaliaYeah. That's a really good point. And it's like the additional perspectives yeah. In my department, you know, I'm gonna have this issue over here that Brett and marketing, you're not gonna be able to see. So , um , having people from all across the company is really impactful and that's actually, I think really how we get so many projects done.
Brett Willis<affirmative> totally. So I feel like that's a good segue into kind of this second , uh , question of just, yeah . How do we think about sustainability at Allagash? What's our, what's our kind of approach to it?
Zoe MaliaSo sustainability has always been a big part of Allagash. Um, this is something Rob's always talked about since day one in 1995 when we got started mm-hmm <affirmative> um, I know it's something personally that when I was looking at Allagash as an employer, that I was like, wow, they do all these really great things for the environment they're really involved. Um , it seems like sustainability is a very prominent piece of their culture. Totally. Um , and having worked at Allagash over four years, I can definitely say that that's true. Um, and really that does start with leadership. Mm-hmm <affirmative> if you know, your leadership is not going to be , um, you know , focus on sustainability, then it's gonna be kind of difficult to make some things happen. So we're really lucky , um , for that, but it is really embedded in our culture. I think we're very thoughtful about it. Um, and how we think about sustainability every day . It's one of our it's in our core values. Um, you know, caring for the environment is something that we think about each day we're here. Um, so we're constantly looking for ways to improve our processes throughout every department at Allagash and cutting . Again, going back to the green team, we have a group of people who, you know, passionate and focus on this, and it's not, that's not limited to these people. That's, you know, this passion is throughout the entire company. And even if people are not on the green team have sustainability and the environment on their, on their brains, pretty much all the time, we're getting ideas , um , from everyone. So it's really amazing. And in , uh , 2019, we became a certified B Corp as well, which was really a , um, you know, a commitment that we're gonna hold our community, our employees in the environment , uh , as equally important to the production of our beer. So , um , it's kind of through and through it's in every aspect of the work that we do,
Tom HalsteadYou know, it's always been, sustainability's always been something we have thought about or Rob has thought about, but now it is actually a department for our company. We have slowly building, hopefully a sustainability , uh , department. So Zoe is our first person. Um, but you know, hopefully over the years that will grow and grow as we continue to grow.
Brett WillisYeah. I mean, that's amazing. And I think like a caveat that I like to add to kind of all this is just like the , the reality that brewing is a pretty resource intensive process. Like it's like, you know, it takes a lot of water, it takes grain, it takes the materials that we're packaging with and everything like that. And I think like the key for us is just how do we minimize all of that? How do we minimize that impact? How do we, and in addition to that, it's the, you know, the whole philanthropic aspect of it, of like donating to people who are, you know, or nonprofits or whoever who are working to keep our water source clean and, you know, various other things. But I think that it's just worth noting that like, you know, brewing isn't like the perfect, it , it just takes a lot of resources, you know?
Zoe MaliaYeah, absolutely
Brett WillisSpeaking of resources, one of those is water and brewing takes a fair amount of water. So I guess, like we have a , a certain, I guess, a way that we think about trying to use as little water as possible per gallon of beer that we brew. So I don't know , did anyone, if either of you want to talk a little bit more about kind of like how we think about that?
Zoe MaliaSo yeah. Water usage , um , Brett, you already mentioned it. Beer is resource intensive. Mm-hmm <affirmative> , um, you know, the beer that you drink, every beer is 85% to 95% water. So the water, u h, is extremely important. U m, good water is really important to have. We're really fortunate with water source. We have Sebago lake, which i s the cleanest water in the country. M m-hmm < affirmative> so, u m, we have really delicious beer because of it. U m, so it's a resource that we w anna, you know, use responsibly and also take care of and protect it i n the best way that we can. M m-hmm < affirmative> and also kind of going back to, I think you might h ave mentioned i t, B rett, just like how many, how much water we're using m m-hmm < affirmative> the industry averages around seven gallons of water per gallon o f b eer produced. So we've managed to cut that down to a bout 3.1 gallons of water per gallon o f beer. That is a huge cut. And we do that in many, many different ways, but , you know, by having equipment that's really efficient, mm-hmm <affirmative> by having , um, you know, employees trained on ways to use the minimum amount of water while they're cleaning , um, the equipment lots and lots of ways they can cut down on water. Um, but again, going back to our water, making sure we wanna actually protect the water mm-hmm <affirmative> and Sebago lake. So we donate 10 cents of every barrel produced to Sebago clean waters, which is kind of a group of nine different organizations that's actually working to protect the watershed there. Um , so that's something that we're really passionate about just since , uh , or in 2021, we were able to donate over $10,000. Um, so that's pretty huge. It's, you know, it's cool to think too, like, as we grow, we're just gonna continue to you , um , you know , putting this money right back into Sebago clean waters and hopefully , um , protecting that really important resource
Tom HalsteadAs we continue to grow, we're gonna be using more water. So mm-hmm <affirmative> we need to protect all that water. Yeah . But , uh , you know, one thing that just popped into my head, have we ever calculated out how many gallons of water we use in the break room to make coffee? Cause I feel like we consume a lot of coffee <laugh>
Brett WillisI just added to that amount. This is so true just today . <laugh>
Zoe MaliaThat's very, very true
Brett WillisThough . We gotta , we gotta calculate it ,
Tom HalsteadTom. Somebody's gotta weigh that out.
Brett Willis<laugh> two barrels per employee <laugh> per year, <laugh> ? It actually brings up something that I was thinking about from before too, of just like thinking of our green team, just the amount of people. So we have about like 140-something people at the brewery right now. And that's about, so about 10 people on the green team, like that's, that feels like a pretty good ratio. Like it's a little under 10%, but it's like, you have a good representation from the company.
Tom HalsteadWe were always one of the, of larger teams too , you know, compared to, you know, perks and rec and , and pilot team or something like that. We were always one of the larger groups.
Zoe MaliaTotally. Mm-hmm
Brett Willis<affirmative> are there any specific things where you're like, ah , green team, we helped move that forward? What would you point at?
Tom HalsteadThe first thing that kind of comes to mind is there was one specific conversation that became kind of a catalyst for a lot of what we're doing now. And , uh, we had a , uh, green team member that asked why we don't won't recycle our PakTechs. And you know, at the time I was like, I don't know, you know, no idea. Yeah , no answer for you. Let me do some research. No one on the east coast, no one in Maine was recyclingPakTechs,
Brett WillisSorry. As an aside , PakTechs are a, the carrier. That is how you carry the , like the four pack of cans, the plastic sort of like thing you snap on top of the cans, sorry, Tom
Tom HalsteadPakTechs are made from recycled materials already. And when we get them, we want to continue the recycling process. Um, I have heard from some breweries that if you are manually putting your four pack together, they will reuse them. We at our brewery do not do that because we use machine to feed the PakTechs into the line and it might cause issues. It might cause , uh , you know, having to stop the whole line, if something gets hung up. Also, if one of those PakTechs is broken and not considered good use , um, you know, somebody could drop their beer, which would be a tragedy, so we don't want that to happen. Um, so it's just easier for us to , um, set those aside and make sure that we get them to the right place to be recycled. We reached out to them and they were very excited to partner with us and for us to become a partner , um, for other breweries to take those back and that kind of opened the floodgates of whatever else can we side stream . And we started looking at absolutely everything, you know, from grain bags , uh, shrink wrap, you know, we, we , uh , recycle the cardboard tubes that come in the middle of the shrink wrap. We recycle , uh , electronics. Now we do batteries and light bulbs and, you know, any a metal we separate out, we do , uh , corks , uh , cages caps, anything that we produce, we have tried to figure out a way to recycle it or get it somewhere , um, for someone else to recycle it. Um, I think just going back to that one conversation where it was like, why don't we do this? And then just thinking about, and having kind of, it was like putting on a new pair of glasses and you all of a sudden have clarity and you're like looking at all the other things that we could also be recycling. So I think as far as projects go, that was absolutely the biggest one, figuring out what we can recycle, where can we recycle it and we're still chipping away at it. We're still trying to figure out, you know, what do we do with this? Can we separate this material out? Like how , how does all this work? Where is it going?
Brett WillisThat's awesome. I feel like if, if I could put a picture of that bay of bins that we have going now, like it's kind of, it's amazing of just all the different I , can anyone explain that bay of bins?
Zoe Malia<laugh> yeah, I can explain it. <laugh> I've had a lot of experience with it. Um , so we essentially have what looks really , uh , overwhelming. It's really not. It's a great system that we have. Um , it is a bunch of slim jims. Um , if you're familiar with those or basically just kind of like skinny looking trash bin containers that are all labeled and lined up next to each other. Um , and that's where reorganize everything. So it's a very simple system. You just collect the materials such as some of those , um, PakTech carriers or bottle caps throw 'em into the specific designated bin. And then once those are super full, we send 'em over to the warehouse and then they get taken care of over there , um, and dumped into bigger bins. So , uh, is , um , really a simple process, but it's helped us so much , uh , in side streaming, all of this, you know, waste, that's get , that's getting produced.
Brett WillisIt just like, it just made me think of, you know, like I at my house now, like have a little like basket of stuff that , where I , I put all the things I know I'm gonna be able to recycle at the brewery <laugh> so , so like you know, corks and cages and PakTechs and like shrink wrap and like all this random stuff that I bring in once a month or whatever is throwing all the separate places. Yeah .
Tom HalsteadWe've had sales people , you know, when they would come to town for a meeting, they're like, here's a bag of recycling, like, okay , thanks . I appreciate it . Oh , this is a year's worth of corks . Great. Thank you.
Zoe MaliaThank you so much.
Brett WillisThat works well.
Zoe MaliaYeah. Brett , I can relate with that. I just have a bag full of what looks like trash. Like anyone coming over, I'm like, I promise. I'm not hoarding trash. Yeah. I'm bringing it to the brewer to get it recycled.
Brett WillisI find myself doing that at like other people's houses too. Like my, my parents-in-law I'll like leave their house with trash. Cause I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, I can get this stuff. I got this . Yeah. Uh , but it's good. It , it side streams it out actually. So nice little segue . How have we kind of then turned that into something that was a little bit more public facing like that people visiting our tasting room could then take advantage of.
Zoe MaliaYeah. Um, so it did kind of all fit into this beautiful little system, it just worked out so well doing our recycling program behind the scenes. So we thought, let's bring it to the public. Sure. Um , so in the tasting room, we offer this program , um, totally free to sign up. You don't even have to sign up if you don't want to , um , where guests, anyone that's visiting the brewery, can bring those materials to us. So we're accepting PakTechs, bottle caps, cages , um , natural corks. So those are gonna be the ones that are not plastic. Um , and then we also accept shipping materials. So that would be brown packing paper, bubble wrap. Um, so we can send it over to Tom so we can , uh , reuse that stuff over at the warehouse when he is shipping out orders from our online store. Um, so we essentially just let guests bring that in and , um, we'll sort it for them recycle it for them. And then each time they have a drop off , um, they get a punch. We basically have like a coffee house punch card system . So they get a punch on their card and on their sixth punch , they get a $10 gift card to the tasting room. So it's a super simple, really low stakes , um, kind of program we have going on easy for us, easy for guests, but it's really taken off. We've started this back in 2020 during the pandemic. So it's still relatively new, but we've had over a hundred people sign up and we have people , um, bring in just massive amounts of side streaming materials. Like you said, Brett, just, yeah , people like it appears that they're hoarding and hoarding for a year and then they bring it into us. <laugh> um , so there's some days where you walk in there and there's like five giant boxes full of materials, but it's super amazing. And people are really, really happy that they have a place to bring these materials that they can't recycle in their blue bin at their house.
Brett WillisAnother segue , cuz I am just apparently a huge fan of segues. I just love segueing things into things. Uh, can you tell me, so we have our, our consumer facing recycling sort of program. Can you tell me a little bit more about our recycling Co-op?
Tom HalsteadThe , um, you know, the recycling co-op right now seems to be a pretty smooth process, but when we first started tossing around the idea, it was, it was difficult. It was confusing for us. And there was a lot of moving parts. Um, fortunately we were not the first brewery to think about this, right? There are other people out there that had already started doing it. So we were able to, you know, kind of , um, piece together what other people had already been doing and make it work for our area. Um, essentially when you have a material, the more of that material, you have, the more value it holds to a recycler. If you have one PakTech, the recyclers like don't don't want that, but if you have a trailer full of PakTechs, then they can actually do something with that. Um , same goes for, you know, cardboard or metal, that sort of thing. So whatever we can collect a large volume of like materials is beneficial for the recycling center and it is more apt to get recycled as opposed to, you know, incinerated. The co-op is built , uh, with a group of other breweries there's , um, you know, there's some , uh, package stores or grocery stores that are collecting PakTechs from when they break apart packs , um, you know, recycling corks and that sort of thing, pretty much anybody that is creating these types of materials , um, that we are already sidestreaming. We will take those in and recycle them. Um , we work with revision energy that does solar panels and we get some plastic pieces from them that I think are spacers from the solar panels or some sort of high tech thingamabobber. Um , but it's a similar type plastic to what we're already recycling. So we'll take those in. Um, so right now it's kind of a Motley crew of , uh, businesses and companies that are just looking to do the right thing. And as it is right now, every Friday we have it. So it up that you can come cruise on by and usually Bob and Oly are there and listening to heavy metal and putting stuff in the baler and driving around on fork trucks. So it's pretty fun.
Brett Willis<laugh> so it's just what they're doing. Just throwing random things in the baler , just, just peeling out in fork trucks. Yeah .
Tom HalsteadThat's I mean, that's what the Baler's for is to crush random things, right.
Brett WillisIt's yeah. We have a YouTube channel for that.
Tom Halstead<laugh>
Brett WillisEventually who knows. Yeah. Right. The second , the baler podcast. Um , so like, I guess you kind of went through all the things that we're taking in that, but I guess so it's like PakTechs, cardboard grain bags, shrink wrap. Um, is , are those the highest-volume things that we're getting from other breweries or people who are taking advantage of it?
Tom HalsteadI would say definitely at the warehouse, the , the higher volume things are , uh , grain bags is a huge one. And , uh , shrink wrap. Whenever you get pallets in off of a , uh , a truck, you know, right off the trailer, it's always shrink, wrapped. Um , and <affirmative> , we, we get a fair amount when we get kegs in. So we need to recycle that as well. But grain bags is a big one. Um, we wish that they could be reused. Blue Oxmalt house actually is doing some trial on reusing super sacks. Um, it's just a of making sure that they're cleaned thoroughly. Right . Um , and also, you know, we hang those and you don't want it to rip and fall over and dump a bunch of grain on top of somebody. So that wouldn't be fun at all. Hmm .
Brett WillisThat's a big, that's a big bag.
Tom HalsteadYeah. Very heavy. Mm-hmm , <affirmative> ,
Zoe MaliaWe're really lucky that the warehouse has the space , um, and has the people over there and, you know, take all this stuff in and , um, keep it there while we don't have the room at the brewery.
Brett WillisYeah. And actually, Tom, could you mention the other breweries who are taking advantage of it right now? I just kind of wanna give him , give him a shout out for , um , taking the extra effort to, to bring that stuff over.
Tom HalsteadYeah. I would say , um, you know, Maine Beer Co. Always been a , a pretty good partner with this. They have been there since day one dropping off , um , cardboard, a lot of cardboard and , uh , grain bags . Um, Oxbow is a pretty good friend of the , uh, the group and, you know, Revision Energy, like I said , um, Bow Street Market, I know there's another, oh , Rosemont foods would bring PakTechs by . So it's kind of a , a , a larger-ish breweries and smaller ish, you know, market-type stores that are dropping stuff off. Bissell Brothers and Mast landing.
Zoe MaliaDefinitive Brewing our , our friends across the street as well. I believe. Right. Um , are participating is awesome. So that's Definitive, Austin street, Battery Steele, Foundation.
Brett WillisGot everyone. They're all ,
Zoe MaliaEverybody,
Tom HalsteadIf it's a brewery in Maine, we take it. We did have a few people in New Hampshire reach out to us because they were looking to start a PakTech recycling program. And when they contacted PakTech, they're like the closest place is all the way up in Portland. So they were trying to figure out how they could get PakTechs up to us. Um, you know, I, I talked to them about maybe there's a, a bunch of people in your area that want to help consolidate, and you could get, fill a U-Haul or something and drive 'em up. But what actually happened that was more beneficial was for them to contact a local recycler and for them to start consolidating as opposed to using the fuel, to drive it up to us , just to send it somewhere else.
Brett WillisI feel like I learn stuff every time. You know, I talk to anybody on this podcast. It's exciting because there's just so much stuff going on. How much did we recycle through that packaging? Co-op in 2021, Tom,
Tom HalsteadI'm gonna just take a stab in the dark and say 70 tons of recycling went through the co-op in 21 .
Brett WillisNice .
Tom HalsteadI stabbed at this piece of paper that you, you sent to me.
Brett Willis< laugh> I sent everyone questions. They g ot to fill in the answers. I provided some numbers to help jog people's memory, c uz there's a lot of numbers out there, especially when it comes to this, u h, sustainability for sure.
Tom HalsteadI would say that the two biggest , uh, materials were definitely , uh , cardboard, PakTechs, and then followed right behind with , uh , shrink wrap grain bags . Those are the ones that we go through the most and we collect the most of
Brett WillisCool.
Tom HalsteadYeah. We , um , we were able to, after a lot of back and forth with the state of Maine, we finally we're able to receive a grant to invest in our co-op. Um , the grant was based on folks that were trying to improve recycling in their community mm-hmm <affirmative> . So we were able to secure some funds to purchase a couple more balers. We were going to retire one of our balers, which I actually believe is not necessarily gonna be retired. It's just moving to a different brewery that might be able to use it. Um, but we were able to , uh , purchase a scale so that we can weigh all of our bails when they go out the door. So when Brett asks, how many pounds of PakTechs we recycled, I don't have to get out my, you know, Abacus and my slide ruler and try and figure that out. Uh, you know, weighing single PakTechs and figuring out the dimensions of a cardboard bin is not fun. Um , I'm sorry. So <laugh>
Brett WillisI'm sorry... But thank you number because it allowed us to say we recycled X number of PakTechs, gotta spread that information.
Tom Halstead<laugh> we , we were able to get a scale. So, you know, we can weigh everything. Uh , Bob was at the warehouse the other day, weighing empty bins and pallets and stuff, so we can get the tare weight on all of that. That's great. So we can be as accurate as possible. Um, Bob also set up a form. So when a brewery drops off, we can weigh what they dropped off and account for it and add it to that form and share it back to that brewery so they can see exactly how much they're recycling through this program. So they can get numbers as well because everyone likes to learn about facts and numbers.
Brett WillisSo Tom mentioned Luke Truman, who's on our facilities team and he's been kind of one of the big leaders of sustainability at the brewery as long as I've been here. And I think honestly, since, as long as he's been here, he's on like every sustainability-oriented panel in Portland and possibly Maine. Luke kind of brought this idea of when we were talking about the green team, like how do you start a green team? What's the best way to think about it to get one going. He said, set, you know, set attainable goals. So I guess what is next for our green team slash brewery? What are these kind of goals that we're looking at?
Zoe MaliaYou know, I think it's interesting cause I , I just came into my new position and we're kind of in like I'm in this kind of transition period. Um, and I think we kind of are as a company , um, you know, around sustainability, but , um, I think one big focus right now, and I think it's something that we've kind of been working on the green team for a little while , um, is really employee engagement. So really specifically I think the one that we've had on the green team , um, is staff trainings and just education in general. So like literally doing departmental waste management training, you know, I , in the taste of room , for example, we're sorting waste all day long and mm-hmm , <affirmative> that takes, you know, time to educate staff members on what goes, where and why does it go there? I think, you know, even providing context to people is really, really helpful , um, so that they can, you know, take that knowledge and, and bring it home and , um , you know, spread the word. Uh , I think so those are gonna be some of the big things we're focusing on as we're moving forward. Mm-hmm <affirmative> , um, you know , educating employees, creating trainings for existing employees and then also creating sustainability orientations for new hires and , um, orientations that will do, you know, maybe twice a year for staff. Um, so that's kind of a big project , um, yeah , in itself. And it's gonna involve a lot of people , um, throughout, you know, every department, but it's gonna be, I think, a huge benefit to us and hopefully we'll see some results in , um, you know, in the ways that we're creating and hopefully creating less of it.
Brett WillisI mean, that's, that's a great call. Cause I feel like one of the most asked questions that I ever got as a member of the green team is like, can I recycle this? And unfortunately the answer is almost never simple. It's like, is it bigger than the palm of your hand? Like, it's just like these ludicrous, but also necessary things that we have to think about to, to make sure things actually get recycled. And aren't just, you know, getting thrown away eventually.
Zoe MaliaYeah, absolutely. It is. It's kind of explaining to people like it really is not that simple. And I know that, and I know I don't expect people to know that and no one expects you to know everything, right. Because the amount of times where, like you said, Brett , where I'm asked is this recyclable half the time. I'm like, I have no idea. Like what the heck is this thing ? You know, it takes time, it takes energy. Um, and I think as the green team members, we're here to try and hopefully make it easier for everyone it's by no means an easy task for anybody. Unfortunately, you know, I wish recycling and we all wish recycling was pretty straightforward, but there's lots of things that you really need to know in order to make it the most efficient that it , it can be. But even that it's , it's still, it's still difficult.
Tom HalsteadI would say. Um, the importance of training and retraining around this is, is I might have an answer for you today. And then tomorrow I have a different answer for you because we're now sidestreaming that or, oh , that's Nope, they're not taking that anymore. Or that's trash, you know, so things change very rapidly in, you know, the brewing industry and in the recycling industry. So being able to come up with a training program that is V easily pivoted to here's, the updated information, not much has changed. We added a bin, we took a bin away. That sort of thing. I think it's, it's gonna be a lifelong project.
Zoe MaliaMm-hmm <affirmative>
Brett WillisWhat Tom or Zoe or both are, are some , some tips, not even necessarily little, what are any tips that you would give to help, you know, any sort of a company try to start to move more into a sustainability mindset or to become a little bit more sustainable?
Tom HalsteadI would say the number one thing is to start any type of group or team. It doesn't matter what you call it. It doesn't matter how many people are on. It could be two people. Um, just getting people together that can focus on the task at hand, they can figure out what they want to do. They can figure out what their capabilities are, their strengths, their weaknesses, and they can team up together to, you know, accomplish what needs to be done. I think having people that can work together that are both passionate or as many people that you can get that are passionate about a cause is always gonna be better than that one person. That's like, you know, I really wish we were doing this and they're just talking to themselves. So that'd be, that'd be, my tip is pick a color and a team name, throw it together, <laugh> go for it.
Zoe MaliaLike I always look forward to the green team meetings and I think it's, you know, sometimes we have a task in mind and we totally don't get it done, cuz we all have other jobs to do. But having that meeting each month and having time to look forward to like getting pumped up or , and being able to talk to other people about things that you're passionate about and even maybe just having a space to be like, Hey, I'm super stressed out about the state of the world. <laugh> that's okay too. And it's nice to have people who feel those same things as well. So I yeah . Say starting a green team remembering that , um, yeah. Celebrate your little wins because yeah, we all kind of wanna install solar arrays and buy all these carbon offsets, but it's, you know, sometimes looking at all those little things, like maybe swapping out your incandescent for LEDs or um , doing a waste audit , another free thing, you know, just checking out, like what are you creating in your company? You know, maybe taking the waste bin out from underneath your desks and having a , um , community like recycling and compost in your office. Another very small thing, but you'd actually be surprised that you're gonna be, you know, moving things from the landfill and probably recycling and composting more. Um, and then I think maybe too, like one of the last things is purchase locally when you can , um, you know, maybe if you have the capacity in your business to create a little local purchasing policy , um, to refer to when you need to go buy some paper or pens, I don't really know what you're buying, but , um, those are all just some like hopefully little things, but I think it's just kind of going back to the why, what , what do you care about , um, you know, taking little steps every day to stay positive, keep on pushing forward and yeah. Go environment. <laugh>
Tom HalsteadGoing, going back to the, going back to the local thing. Zoe, do you want to talk about the go-go refill? I think that's pretty exciting. The bulk soaps and stuff.
Zoe MaliaYeah . Yeah, absolutely. Let's see. Yeah. So I guess another green team project that we're kind of working on , um, is partnering up with a local zero waste company. Um, it's woman-owned, it's called Go-Go refill. They're located 20 minutes from Allagash. It's a super rad company that offers , um, refillable items to the public. So what we're going to do, and when I say re refill, I mean like your shampoo, conditioners, cleaning products , um , they have zero waste, plastic free dog toys, kitchen supplies, like everything you can imagine. So , um, they're gonna be coming to the tasting room a couple times a month, starting in April to kick off earth month. So that's gonna be a really exciting , um, kind of project we have going on to promote up using less plastic buying locally. Um , and just being more mindful about what you're purchasing , um, and just like what you're using in your home. So that's a really exciting project we're pumped about as well.
Tom HalsteadAnd we started getting there soap even for the break room , uh , and for the bathrooms. So we are purchasing bulk from them as well. And I think one of the cool things about their company is you can bring your own container. And I like when they post online, they're like, look at this wacky person with their wacky container and I love it. You know? So yeah . I'm telling you, I'm thinking ketchup bottles for shampoo is the it's the way of the future .
Brett WillisI mean, those , that was awesome. Thank you both. Uh , I feel like you hit on so many different topics. I appreciate the time you took to chat about it. Thank you.
Zoe MaliaI'm super pumped to be here. This is awesome. Thank you so much.
Brett WillisThis has been an Allagash brewing production and if you have something you want us to talk about on the show, shoot us a message at podcast@allagash .com . Thank you as always for listening.