Boundary Bay Brewery and the Neighborhood Chickens…

Boundary Bay Brewery is located in Bellingham Washington; a town that embraces personal creativity, freedom and expression.  Things just seem to be done a little differently here in Bellingham.  The pace is a little slower.  The people are a little friendlier.  You’re bound to see smiles from the people you just happen to pass in the street.  Boundary Bay Brewery is situated right on Railroad Avenue in downtown Bellingham and next door to us is Core Kinetics Studio who happen to have chickens roosting in their backyard.  The studio decided to raise the chickens in this urban environment to help support local food charities (by donating eggs and/or money raised from selling eggs to their own customers).  As any of you know who’ve been keeping up with us or our blog we are always looking for ways to do what we do in more sustainable ways.  We like to be good neighbors and we saw that the next door chickens might like to feast on some of our barley.  In return, the studio (or rather the chickens!) are providing us with natural, organic fertilizer for our beer garden (otherwise known as chicken manure to add to our compost!).  Our beer garden has been certified as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat, thus we have made a commitment to eco-friendly gardening practices like reducing the use of chemicals and using chicken poop instead.  Plus, to get our fertilizer and soil ammender, we only have to walk a block down our alley and visit some lovely neighborhood chickens and friendly pilates people.  No driving, no carbon footprint that needs to be offset, no congestion, no pollution.  Just good neighbors sharing what they have with each other and finding ways to, together, become more sustainable and a stronger community.

Boundary Bay Brewery becomes Wildlife Habitat

Boundary Bay Beer Garden Stage

The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has just announced that our Boundary Bay Brewery Beer Garden is now recognized as an official Certified Wildlife Habitat site. The property attracts a variety of birds, butterflies and other wildlife, while helping to protect the local environment. NWF began the Wildlife Habitat certification program in 1973 and has since certified over 110,000 habitats nationwide. The majority of Certified Wildlife Habitat sites represent the personal commitment of individuals and families to provie important refuge for wildlife near their homes, but NWF has also certified more than 3100 schools and hundreds of business and community sites. Certified habitats can be found everywhere from restaurants, hospitals, and places of worship to community parks, corporate buildings and municipal facilities. NWF teaches the importance of enviornmental stewardship by providing guidelines for making landscapes more hospitable to wildlife.

Our Beer Garden in Early Spring 2007

In order to become certified, a property like our beer garden must provide the four basic elements that all wildlife need: food, water, cover and places to raise young; and must employ sustainable gardening practices.  Habitat restoration is critical in urban and suburban settings where commercial and residential development encroaches on natural wildlife areas, limiting the availability of resources wildlife need to survive and thrive.  In addition to providing for wildlife, certified habitats like our Beer Garden here at Boundary Bay Brewery conserve our natural resources by reducing or eliminating the need for fertilizers, pesticides, and/or irrigation water, which ultimately protects the air, soil and water throughout our communities.  Creating habitats like this not only helps wildlife, it can help reduce global warming pollution and save energy costs as well.  We here at Boundary Bay Brewery are just trying to make our own piece of earth a healthy, green space that adds to the overall beauty and life of this community we call home.

Boundary Bay Puts on the Heat!

We here at Boundary Bay Brewery are focusing our efforts on looking at all aspects of our business and finding ways that we can reduce our impact on the environment.  We have addressed major changes in many areas of operation in our brewery…from food waste to recycling to energy efficiency.  We are partners with Sustainable Connections and with Smart Trips, our beer garden is certified as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat, and we buy local ingredients for our restaurant whenever possible.  Usually, this blog serves to announce the new changes we are making, but today we thought why not feature a great system that is already in place here at Boundary Bay Brewery.  As part of our brewing process, we use a heat exchanger to cool down the wort which simultaneously heats up water that we reuse in our brewing process.  A wikipedia article on brewing explains the heat exchange process more clearly:  “Another common method of energy recovery takes place during the wort cooling. When cold water is used to cool the wort in a heat exchanger, the water is significantly warmed. In an efficient brewery, cold water is passed through the heat exchanger at a rate set to maximize the water’s temperature upon exiting. This now-hot water is then stored in a hot water tank.”  It’s nice to know that Boundary Bay already has in place a practice that Wikipedia defines as being used in an efficient brewery.  We believe strongly in assessing our business and in making any changes necessary to ensure that we are reflecting what our priorities are.  But, it’s also nice to hear that some of what we have been doing for a very long time is already sustainable as a business practice!

What Boundary Bay Brewery is doing for the Earth

Boundary Bay Brewery is making efforts all the time to become more sustainable in our business practices.  We are lucky to live in a community that places importance on recycling, alternative energy, and sustainable life choices.  Bellingham does a lot to encourage environmentally responsible decisions…there are programs to educate and support local, sustainable farmers, we have an excellent recycling system that is even more advanced than what Seattle can offer, and we have a non-profit organization here in town supporting and encouraging sustainable business growth and practices.  Perhaps this partly explains why Bellingham is rated by several popular magazines as the best place to live in the United States. In early 2007, by a unanimous city council vote, the Bellingham local government chose to lead by example by buying 100 percent green power for all city-owned facilities.The community’s purchase resulted in EPA recognizing the Community of Bellingham as the first EPA Green Power Community in Washington State.  Bellingham received EPA’s Partner of the Year Award in 2007 and continues to display national leadership in the purchase and support of green power.  Here at the brewery, we’re trying to do our part and we are learning, growing and changing every day.  Here’s a list of what we’re doing so far at Boundary Bay:

* We are a locally owned and run business – providing jobs for nearly a hundred people in our community.

* We are dedicated to buying from local farmers and markets whenever possible.  Currently, all dishes on our menu that include local ingredients are marked with a “Think Local, Buy Fresh” logo.

* We have made a commitment to move Toward Zero Waste and, as part of that commitment, we have resolved to reduce our total waste by 50% this year alone.

* We participate in – and highly encourage – all forms of recycling.  As part of our Food Plus program, over the course of one year we will compost 210 yards (or two semi trailers FULL!) of food waste that would have otherwise been traditional restaurant garbage.

* We use biodegradeable utensils and carry out boxes for all to go orders.

* The used oil from the fryer in our beer garden gets reused as biodiesel fuel.

* All of our spent grains from the brewing process go to local farmers who use it as livestock feed.

* Our Beer Garden is certified as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat.

* We will be having a RECYCLED art show Nov. 28th through Dec. 5th, featuring local artists as well as artisans represented through Ten Thousand Villages who make art using recycled components.  Show is to raise awareness of sustainable art and to promote the “trash to treasure” concept.

We are always looking for more ways to reduce our impact on this planet and we’d love to hear your ideas if you’ve got suggestions that you think might help make Boundary Bay Brewery an even more sustainable business!