The Boston Beer Company, maker of brands such as Samuel Adams, Truly Hard Seltzer, Twisted Tea, Dogfish Head and Angry Orchard, released its inaugural Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Report.

“While we’re just starting our journey, we’ve long believed it’s important to provide accurate and transparent reporting on the impact our company has on our people, our planet and our communities,” said Jill Westra, senior manager of sustainability, Boston Beer Company. 

“In 2021 we kicked off the process of establishing a solid baseline that will provide important data-driven context that will help us continue to improve over the long term.”

Some of the key highlights of the Boston Beer Company’s 2021 ESG Report, Setting the Course for the Future, are outlined below.

Company and Governance

• Boston Beer is further integrating ESG into its governance structures through the creation of an Executive Sustainability Committee, a new Senior Manager of Sustainability position and a coworker-based Sustainability Network Group.
• The company carried out a comprehensive materiality assessment to narrow down the vast universe of ESG and focus its efforts on topics considered most material, or highly important, to its business and stakeholders.

Planet

• Boston Beer has developed a more standardized approach for collecting and managing its production breweries’ utility data, which indicates how it consumes energy and water.
• The company acknowledges that it believes climate change is real and is committing to future action, with 2021 as the year it set the course for the future.
• The Dogfish Head brand created the company’s first traceably sourced beer, Dogfish Head Re-Gen-Ale, which addresses climate change through agriculture using Indigo Carbon, a program that provides growers with a financial incentive to store carbon in their soil.

People

• Continuing its focus on coworker training, Boston Beer achieved an average of 16 hours of coworker time on learning and development – for a total of approximately 43,600 hours – which helped it promote more than 430 coworkers in 2021.
• The company established a DE&I baseline and implemented programs that create awareness and accountability across the company.
• In its first year participating, Boston Beer scored 70% on the HRC Corporate Equality Index in 2021.
• Coworkers gave Boston Beer high scores on questions related to pride in working for the company; believing in Boston Beer’s values; concern for coworker safety, personal wellbeing and diversity; confidence in the future of Boston Beer; and pride in its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Communities

• The company launched Boston Beer Volunteers! to provide coworkers with opportunities to engage with local nonprofits in the communities where it operates.
• The company contributed over $2.34 million to support programs including Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream (BTAD) and Dogfish Head’s Beer & Benevolence program.