At its brewery in Scotland, the craft brewer BrewDog runs on wind power and gas made from malted barley, part of a strategy to reduce carbon emissions as much as possible. But the company, which also owns a chain of pubs, wanted to go further.
That’s why it now owns a forest.
On 1,500 acres in the Scottish Highlands currently used for grazing livestock, the company plans to restore a native forest, planting a million trees over the next two years to help sequester carbon. On another 550 acres, it will restore peatlands, a type of ecosystem that is particularly effective at storing carbon.
Until the forest—which is expected to sequester about 300,000 tons of CO2—is planted, the company will fund carbon removal projects from other partners, like the U.K.’s Woodland Trust, to offset its footprint.
These latest projects mean the company is now carbon negative, removing twice as much carbon from the atmosphere as it emits, including all of the pollutions in its supply chain.
“We thought we were doing our bit when it came to sustainability,” says CEO James Watt. “The more we dug into this, the more we found out that we weren’t doing nearly enough. We are facing an imminent climate crisis, and we think carbon neutral is no longer enough.”
