CORPORATE RESPONSABILITY

01 Is BREW a social business or a social enterprise ?

Although we could be considered a social business as per our track record, since 25% of our profits were invested to support NGOs, the philosophy of the company is to behave as a leading example of the social enterprise category.

With a growing environmental, humanitarian, and economical crisis, we believe for-profit companies share a moral obligation to address these challenges as a united front. Achieving systemic change is possible by using their power as a force for good and through collaboration across different sectors. As a social enterprise, we are creating new relationships by engaging different stakeholders with complementary competencies: entrepreneurs, consumers, and social projects empowering disadvantaged children. This is how we use coffee & tea for social impact.

Our motivation is to show that a company can do things differently: supporting communities, minimizing its environmental impact while being profitable in order to inspire other traditional businesses to follow the same path.

This choice is driven by our inner conviction that a greater impact could be achieved by persuading the traditional organizations to adopt a more socially driven business model, rather than concretizing the existing but limited opportunities of social business in the economy.

Our final aspiration is to create a suction effect that would lead to deep economic change and consciously engaged consumption.

02 What is a social enterprise ?

A social enterprise is a mission-driven for-profit enterprise that considers two added and equally important objectives besides financial return: maximizing social impact while minimizing environmental footprint.

03 How does our social impact model work?

Our Social Impact is at the core of who we are and what we stand for. By unleashing human craft and the fruits of artisanal labor, we are able to contribute up to 25% of every sale to social projects dedicated to moving humanity forward. The final funds given to support these projects thus depend on various factors among which are the batch, the price, the retailer’s margin, the royalties paid to foundations.

04 How much have we funded so far?

Since the start of our project in 2018, we’ve funded more than €10,000 in support of various social projects empowering disadvantaged youth and children around the world.

05 Who do we support?

Through our sales, we mainly finance social projects that use football as a tool to empower disadvantaged kids and youth anywhere in the world. Some retailers have personal attachments to a specific project and therefore prefer that our collaboration supports their chosen cause, not necessarily related to football.

06 How do we select the social projects that we support?

Through our now expanded network in the football scene, we are able to spot existing projects around the globe that use football to generate sustainable, positive impact. We start by evaluating the project based on eligibility requirements. Once selected, we identify their financial needs. We then allocate an retailer collaboration to the project. Our goal is to reach the projects’ financial needs through the sales of a given collaboration.

07 How do we ensure that the projects we support are well maintained and sustainable?

Being well aware that the act of funding in the aid and development sector can not be sustainable, or even have unintended negative consequences, we are especially careful to support sustainable projects generating positive impact, with the potential to reach systemic change. For this, we implemented eligibility requirements for selection and keep track of the maintenance and sustainability of the projects supported. We do this by requesting trimestral activity reports as well as impact measurement reports, doing on-site visits, organising regular calls and keeping close contact with the project leaders.

08 What being CO2 neutral means?

The concept of ‘CO2 neutrality’ or ‘carbon neutrality’ has become a buzzword in recent years with many companies, products, and even cities and countries claiming to be or to become CO2neutral.

However, until recently, the exact meaning of the term remained ambiguous, with different entities using different interpretations.

This changed in September 2009, when the UK department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) released the ‘Guidance on carbon neutrality’ in order to enable a meaningful and honest use of the term carbon neutral. In this reference document, ‘carbon neutral’ is defined as follows:

“Carbon neutral means that – through a transparent process of calculating emissions, reducing those emissions and offsetting residual emissions – net carbon emissions equal zero.”

The CO2 Carbon neutrality thus involves a 3-step process:

calculating emissions;
reducing emissions; and
offsetting remaining emissions.

Since 2018, BREW owns the CO2-Neutral certification delivered by CO2 Logic (and Vincotte – an international independent certification body.)

09 What is our environmental footprint ?

Freight IN represents 65% of the total emissions or 253 tCO2e, it is the highest source of our emissions. Our emissions linked with freight OUT holds the second position in term of CO2e emissions (112 tCO2e).

The CO2 impact of business-travel accounts for 6% of our carbon footprint. Then energy and commuting-related emissions represent respectively 1% and 0.5% of our global impact.

10 How do we compensate our environmental footprint ?

To offet our carbon emissions we’ve decided to support the SAVINGS TREES PROJECT in Uganda so that 300+ families receive an efficient woodstove.

Each stove helps reduce wood and charcoal consumption by up 40% compared to other cooking methods and can save US $75 per year per family.

Each woodstove contributes to reducing 1.4tonnes of CO2 per year – the equivalent of a return journey for one person from Antwerp to Washington D.C.

The woodstoves also create a reduction in the emission of harmful pollutants that frequently cause respiratory illnesses such as Pneumonia for children and women in Africa. UNICEF estimates that 2 million children died by pneumonia every year. Pneumonia is the single largest cause of child death and reducing indoor air pollution is one of the key prevention measures.

These woodstoves will also help reduce local air pollution and thus reduce the impact of smoke on African children whilst allowing for BREW “CO2 Neutrality”.