BLUESTONE Brewing Company has become the first brewery visitor centre in the world to gain Green Key accreditation.

Green Key is the largest global eco-label awarded to more than 2,900 tourism providers in 57 countries worldwide. The award offers an environmentally sustainable choice when planning holidays, excursions or business trips.

Green Key Wales launched in April 2015 and offers a growing collection of the country's most environmentally sustainable destinations.

The Cilgwyn micro-brewery, based at Tyriet Farm, just outside Newport, has been established for five years and has always been proud of its eco-friendly ethos.

Earlier this year, the team decided to apply to become part of the Green Key scheme. An assessor visited the brewery in late November and it recently received the exciting news to confirm their accreditation.

Simon Turner, head brewer and owner, said: “We are unique in the sense that we use our own water supply, our water filters down through the surrounding Preseli Mountains and collects in a home built well.

“The environment agency regularly test the water and it has been found to be perfect for use without any filtration or purification. All waste water production from the brewery is gravity piped to a reed bed filtration system before it is returned to a local trout stream.

“We also have solar panels fitted on top of our brewery building, allowing us to use a sustainable source of energy for our visitor centre and shop. In 2017, we also constructed a grass roof for our stage area, where we have planted shrubs and designed our own self-watering system. We even managed to grow a few strawberries up there last summer!

“During the brewing process we are very waste conscious. While moving water from the boiling tank to the cooling tank a heat exchange process takes place. We use a plate cooler to cool the boiling liquid down and instead of throwing away the leftover hot water, we reuse it in the mashing stage; reducing our excess waste.

“After brewing we feed any spent hops, yeast, beer slops and the brewer’s grain to the cattle and sheep on the farm - we do our absolute best to make sure we don't waste a thing!”

The brewery has become a local hub for the community. The local gardening club, where members swap seeds, plants and advice hold regular meetings in the visitor centre. Club members recently grew their own hops to turn into an organic beer.

It also hosts a variety of live music, comedy, poetry and fundraising events throughout the year which are well attended by the local community as well as visiting holidaymakers.

Simon added: “The brewery staff have also been heavily involved with promoting and collecting for Syrian refugees, with the brewery acting as collection centre for clothing, food and bedding and these items are then delivered to a major collection point in Cardiff by the brewery vans while delivering beer.

“We are also now a collection point for Bikes for Africa, a charity that oversees the refurbishing of bikes for redistribution to rural African communities, with over 75 bikes delivered to partaking Halfords stores again delivered while delivering beer.”

This summer the brewery built its very own compost toilet block.

“We tried to be a bit creative and built the urinals out of old beer barrels, and they seem to provide everyone with a bit of a laugh when they go to use them,” said Simon.

“We’ve also recently converted an old and tumbling down traditional stone building into a building suitable for a bottling plant. The bottling plant will cut transport costs and a round trip of some 345 miles per bottling run, significantly reducing our carbon footprint.

“We are also moving from vacuum wrapping to boxes. All plastic is currently stored in one tonne bags and collected annually for plastic reprocessing. In our office, we only used recycled paper in our printers and all our lightbulbs are energy saving.

“We have also had malt bags sewn into carrier bags and these are then sold as souvenir carrier bags for the public to use when buying beers from our shop. Any waste cardboard is given to our local gardening club to use on their gardens, and we plan to begin shredding some too to use as bedding for our farm animals.

“Our aim is to have zero waste going to landfill by the end of 2019.

“Being green has always been a huge part of Bluestone Brewing Company, so the Green Key accreditation seemed like the perfect thing for us to apply for. To be recognised as the first brewery visitor centre in the world to achieve the Green Key status is just amazing. Hopefully, people will see what we are doing and be inspired to try to improve their own businesses to become as green as possible.

“Going through the process has helped to highlight areas where we could improve, but it has also made us feel very proud of what we have already achieved to date.”