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Mill Street Brewery – Setting The Bar For Energy Efficiency

Published

5 years ago

8 minute read

Mill Street Brewery, born out of the Toronto Distillery District, their story begins with the emergence of a small red brick brewery back in 2002. Over the last two decades, one thing has consistently taken precedence over their process. Care and consideration for their environmental footprint on the commercial and local level. 

The IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV), in association with the National Retail Federation, conducted a research study of 18,980 consumers in 28 countries. Some of this data reported 57% of consumers would pivot their spending habits for more environmentally friendly brands. In line with the efforts by the Mill Street Brewery team, the study also reports 77% of consumers consider sustainability and environmentally responsible brands important when asked about their spending habits. 

Not often do we deep dive into what our favourite brands are proactively doing to increase their green initiatives, whether it be energy efficiency, consumption, recycling or waste management. Fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with Kaitlin Vandenbosch, Brewmaster for Mill Street Brewery and Bennie Dingemanse, Head Brewer at the Mill Street Brewery Calgary Brewpub to discuss their efforts as an organization and also what it means to their team as they continue to improve their environmentally friendly initiatives. 

An interesting story to tell behind this brand, continuing to produce their Original Organic Lager since the day their doors opened. Continuously seeking new ways as a team to reduce their energy consumption and environmental footprint. Serving local areas in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, Ottawa and St. Johns, Mill Street is the largest producer of certified organic beer in Canada. The best part is that their certified organic pale barley malt is Canadian grown & processed. The barley they use is grown in Saskatoon and Alberta, then malted in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Kaitlin offers some additional insight into sourcing local as an organization.

“It used to be very difficult to find raw organic materials back in 2002, over the years we have worked very closely with the barley malt industry in North America and Canada Malting. Since 2007, working with these organizations, we were able to transition all of our organic malts to be grown in Canada on the prairies and they certified their facility in Thunder Bay to process that malt for us. Around 15-20 Canadian farmers grow the grains that are used in our organic beers.”

Being one of the largest breweries in Canada, the importance of having educated professionals working as a team to implement set targets to work towards is a great way to continuously improve and reduce their emissions. Kaitlin mentions exceeding some of the targets they set for 2019. 

“For 2019, we had targets set a for 10% energy and water reduction and a 4% increase in waste divergence. We exceeded all of those targets. Working with our various operations and maintenance teams, engineers, the city and the companies that pick up our waste. We have had a 12.5% reduction in energy usage, a 17% decrease in water consumption, and a 12.5% increase in divergence of waste. It is something that we are always looking at both in our production facility and our brewpubs.”

Mill Street has one Brewpub location in Calgary managed by Head Brewer, Bennie Dingemanse. Located on 17th Avenue SW, serving Mill Street house-brewed products and great food in the most vibrant part of the city. The green initiatives continue to be a key driver for the Brewpub team, Bennie offers his thoughts on working towards a cleaner future in his Calgary location. 

“We divert our waste stream from our restaurant with our waste collection service providers. After collecting data from just our first quarter, we saved 2.2 barrels of oil, we saved about 14 trees, close to 4,000Kw/h of energy and 22,000 liters of water just by diverting our waste and having it properly disposed of. Another thing we do on the Brewpub level is looking at new methods when cleaning our tanks, where we analyze our water usage and work towards minimizing our wastewater while achieving the same result.”

Not only that, but Bennie and his team have proactively found ways to have their waste material exported so that it can be repurposed for commercial use by local merchants. One example is a partnership with coRISE, who actively utilize spent grain from the Calgary Brewpub for baked goods to sell in the local community. Bennie and his team have also been extracting sugar from spent material, combining it with food waste from the restaurant to be turned into compost.

As we continue to navigate this mid-to-post pandemic; breweries, restaurants and bars alike have adopted eCommerce to serve their customers. Mill Street has a variety of options to continue offering its house-brewed products and menu. Delivery is available on UberEats, SkipTheDishes, Doordash and from their Calgary website. As an added benefit, Bennie mentions that they recently updated their delivery radius to service areas outside of the downtown core.

Visiting The Mill Street Calgary Brewpub

To stay updated, Bennie recommends following his location on social media for any future updates on guidelines or new product releases. On the Brewpub level, following all Alberta Health Services recommendations in regards to capacity and sanitization. They have implemented new cleaning policies, hand sanitizer as you enter and staff are washing their hands regularly. Recently partnering with a local startup called LivCity that has developed an app for contactless ordering from your table using your smartphone, mitigating interactions between customers and staff in the efforts of social distancing. 

If you would like to learn more about the forward-thinking initiatives being implemented by the Mill Street Brewery team, or to browse their wide array of products available, visit their main website here, Calgary Brewpub website or follow them on their social media accounts below.

 

Mill Street Brewery Facebook

Mill Street Brewery Twitter

Mill Street Calgary Brewpub Facebook

 

 

For more stories, visit Todayville Calgary

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RFK Jr. says Hep B vaccine is linked to 1,135% higher autism rate

Published on July 1, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Matt Lamb

They got rid of all the older children essentially and just had younger children who were too young to be diagnosed and they stratified that, stratified the data

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found newborn babies who received the Hepatitis B vaccine had 1,135-percent higher autism rates than those who did not or received it later in life, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Tucker Carlson recently. However, the CDC practiced “trickery” in its studies on autism so as not to implicate vaccines, Kennedy said.

RFK Jr., who is the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, said the CDC buried the results by manipulating the data. Kennedy has pledged to find the causes of autism, with a particular focus on the role vaccines may play in the rise in rates in the past decades.

The Hepatitis B shot is required by nearly every state in the U.S. for children to attend school, day care, or both. The CDC recommends the jab for all babies at birth, regardless of whether their mother has Hep B, which is easily diagnosable and commonly spread through sexual activity, piercings, and tattoos.

“They kept the study secret and then they manipulated it through five different iterations to try to bury the link and we know how they did it – they got rid of all the older children essentially and just had younger children who were too young to be diagnosed and they stratified that, stratified the data,” Kennedy told Carlson for an episode of the commentator’s podcast. “And they did a lot of other tricks and all of those studies were the subject of those kind of that kind of trickery.”

But now, Kennedy said, the CDC will be conducting real and honest scientific research that follows the highest standards of evidence.

“We’re going to do real science,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to make the databases public for the first time.”

He said the CDC will be compiling records from variety of sources to allow researchers to do better studies on vaccines.

“We’re going to make this data available for independent scientists so everybody can look at it,” the HHS secretary said.

Health and Human Services also said it has put out grant requests for scientists who want to study the issue further.

Carlson asked if the answers would “differ from status quo kind of thinking.”

“I think they will,” Kennedy said. He continued on to say that people “need to stop trusting the experts.”

“We were told at the beginning of COVID ‘don’t look at any data yourself, don’t do any investigation yourself, just trust the experts,”‘ he said.

In a democracy, Kennedy said, we have the “obligation” to “do our own research.”

“That’s the way it should be done,” Kennedy said.

He also reiterated that HHS will return to “gold standard science” and publish the results so everyone can review them.

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Business

Elon Musk slams Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ calls for new political party

Published on July 1, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Robert Jones

The Tesla CEO warned that Trump’s $5 trillion plan erases DOGE’s cost-cutting gains, while threatening to unseat lawmakers who vote for it.

Elon Musk has reignited his feud with President Donald Trump by denouncing his “Big Beautiful Bill” in a string of social media posts, warning that it would add $5 trillion to the national debt.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,” Musk exclaimed in an X post last month.

Musk renewed his criticism Monday after weeks of public silence, shaming lawmakers who support it while vowing to unseat Republicans who vote for it.

“They’ll lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” he posted on X, while adding that they “should hang their heads in shame.”

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO also threatened to publish images branding those lawmakers as “liars.”

 

Trump responded on Truth Social by accusing Musk of hypocrisy. “He may get more subsidy than any human being in history,” the president wrote. “Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa… BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”

Musk responded by saying that even subsidies to his own companies should be cut.

Before and after the 2024 presidential election, Musk spoke out about government subsidies, including ones for electric vehicles, stating that Tesla would benefit if they were eliminated.

This latest exchange marks a new escalation in the long-running and often unpredictable relationship between the two figures. Musk contributed more than $250 million to Trump’s reelection campaign and was later appointed to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which oversaw the termination of more than 120,000 federal employees.

Musk has argued that Trump’s new bill wipes out DOGE’s savings and reveals a deeper structural problem. “We live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” he wrote, arguing that the legislation should be knows as the “DEBT SLAVERY bill” before calling for a new political party “that actually cares about the people.”

In June, Musk deleted several inflammatory posts about the president, including one claiming that Trump was implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein files. He later acknowledged some of his comments “went too far.” Trump, in response, said the apology was “very nice.”

With the bill still under Senate review, the dispute underscores growing pressure on Trump from fiscal hardliners and tech-aligned conservatives – some of whom helped deliver his return to power. Cracks in the coalition may spell longer term problems for the Make America Great Again movement.

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