Maskell, D. L., Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UNITED KINGDOM
Poster
The global population is growing, set to reach over 9 billion people by 2050, and this will create significant challenges. For instance, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) have projected that this growth will require 70% more food be produced than in 2005–2007. In the future, the food market, to which brewing contributes significantly, will be required to be sustainable to survive. This does not mean only to be economically sustainable, but environmentally as well. The broader concept of sustainability is that we have an opportunity to reduce our demands on the planet’s resources. As an industry, we work with both renewable and finite resources, but even the renewable resources increasingly have other demands on them. Many sizes of brewing companies have sustainability policies and frameworks that they are working within; the best will be using sustainability to drive their businesses forward. The brewing industry has already on many levels recognized the impact we have on the world around us, and that the environment has on our resources. Great strides have been made in understanding how brewers can reduce their water and carbon footprints, research has been undertaken into developing drought-resistant barley crops, and there is greater interest in the utilization of novel grains for brewing. Many brewers feed their by-products back into the local agricultural economy. However, we have the potential to go beyond this through the valorization of these streams. Valorization adds value to our outputs and, therefore, could potentially represent an additional income stream. This review will look outside the traditional routes for brewery co-products beyond animal feed and fertilizer and ask can we as brewers work our way to globally become an essential part of the bioeconomy? Can the bioeconomy create new opportunities and markets for all sizes of brewing companies? And, are there any lessons we can learn from other beverage industries that can be applied to brewing?
Dawn Maskell is the director of the International Centre for Brewing and Distilling at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland (U.K.). Dawn has a Ph.D. degree from Oxford Brookes University, where she researched brewing yeast aging and stress tolerance under the tutelage of Prof. Katherine Smart. Prior to this Dawn gained an honors degree in brewing and distilling from Heriot-Watt University. Before joining the ICBD in 2015 she worked on the valorization of brewery and distillery co-products and is a co-founder of a spin-out company, Horizon Proteins, which utilizes protein from the co-products generated by the Scotch malt whisky industry. Dawn is a member of the American Society of Brewing Chemists and the Institute of Brewing and Distilling, with a Diploma in Brewing, and is an accredited chartered scientist. Dawn is also on the Board of Examiners for the Institute of Brewing and Distilling and the programme committee for the Worldwide Distilled Spirits Conference 2017.
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