Mother Earth Brewing

I am going to start this blog off today with six words: Cheers to the start of summer!!!

We have had a whirlwind month of May with a ton of events, tasting, and festivals.  We kicked of May with the BBQ On The Neuse Festival, right here in Kinston.  We always look forward to this event!  It is the biggest event we participate in and the festival draws in nearly 25,000 people, so we are always eager to show all the visitors around the brewery.  In addition to BBQ On The Neuse, we have poured beer at many festivals around NC, DC, and GA, spent a week in Greensboro for Triad Craft Beer Week, and as I type this, Travis is pouring beer in the western part of NC for Asheville Beer Week and getting ready for the finale, The Beer City Festival, this weekend in downtown Asheville!

So, needless to say, we have been pretty busy, but still have not forgotten one of our main philosophies and that is to Reuse, Reduce, and Recycle.  I know you remember a few months ago, I wrote a blog about how Mother Earth had teamed up with the North Carolina Forestry Service to re-use our old malt bags for the seeds for trees.  Well, that has happened again!

This time we have teamed up with our good friends Charley and Kate Lewis of Stand Up Outfitters, right down the road in New Bern.  Charley, Kate, and I do a ton of Stand Up Paddle surfing together and are always striking up conversations on cool ways businesses can collaborate. After all, that's what it’s all about, right!? So about a month ago we were out one weekend enjoying some super fun waist high paddle waves and Charlie starting talking about how much wasted “bubble wrap” they have around the shop because all the boards they order are very fragile, therefore shipped in a ton of bubble wrap. Well, what do we have in common: beer is fragile, and pint glasses and other merchandise are fragile, so we decided to drive the Mother Earth van to New Bern, pick up a van load of bubble wrap, and use it to wrap and ship all our fragile things that we send to people around the United States.  With that being said, they have so much excess bubble wrap at Stand Up Outfitters we basically have an unlimited supply of bubble wrap that would have otherwise been sitting in a land fill somewhere.

The moral of the story is simple.  Others people's waste can be other people’s treasures.  By us working together, sharing ways to live simply, and being innovative and collaborative, we were able to help each other, and yet again, reduce our carbon footprint.

So in conclusion, work close with your peers, collaborate, live simply, and always find a way to drink craft beer and go stand up paddling!

Wishing everyone a happy start of summer………..Trent