Our Planet

At Vancouver Island Brewery, we are proud to produce quality island-made beers right here in Victoria. We’re also proud to be from Vancouver Island, one of the most beautiful places in the world. We’re committed to keeping our island beautiful. By choosing our beers, you are taking a part of that commitment just by raising a bottle on another beautiful day on this island paradise we call home.

By returning your bottles to the local return depot, you are helping replenish our pool of refillable bottles. The recycling depot stacks up the bottles and sends them to our brewery where they are washed and sanitised on site, then filled with beer. Each recycled bottle can be washed and refilled about 15 times. Any glass that we can’t use gets sent back to the recycling depot – right around the corner from our brewery. 

We try to reuse as much as we can at the brewery. During the brewing process, a large amount of organic solid waste is left behind. This “spent grain” is collected in a silo on site. Spent grain is nutritious fodder for livestock; local farmers are quite happy to take it as feed for their animals, just as we are happy to see nothing go to waste. Even down to everyday tasks done at and for the warehouse, we are conscious of making good environmental choices.

We replaced our aging fleet of sales vehicles with smaller, fuel-efficient cars. All of the paper in the office is reused and carefully sorted for recycling. In addition, in the coming months we will be updating all of the lighting in the brewery with the guidance of BC Hydro, in order to make the switch to more energy-efficient light fixtures and light bulbs. We have a lot of lights at our brewery, but we’re excited to be making the forward-thinking changes.

At Vancouver Island Brewery, we want to keep Vancouver Island beautiful. You’re taking part in the process just by sharing a cold brew with your buddies, then taking your bottles back for a refund. Together, we can keep Vancouver Island looking wonderful for generations to come – one beer at a time.