Here’s a great example of how a company went green, but in a way that makes sense — to make more bourbon:

Faced with the increasing challenge of disposing the spent grains from the distillery process, Maker’s Mark turned to Ecovation, a division of Ecolab, Inc. Ecovation analyzed the waste streams, selected the waste treatment and energy conversion processes and was responsible for the detailed design and construction of the facility. Bob Franklin, vice president, project delivery, for Ecovation said, “The core of the treatment process is Ecovation’s patented MFT, a high-rate anaerobic treatment process.” According to Franklin, filtrate from the distillery’s spent grain (thick slop) is treated aerobically in an enclosed reactor to produce biogas with high methane content. The influent stream has a COD concentration of 30,000 mg/L and the reactor achieves 90% removal efficiency. The reactor converts the organic compounds to methane and CO2 with very little biological yield. This anaerobic process consumes far less power and produces much less sludge than a comparable aerobic system. The biogas is collected, compressed, dried and transported to the boilers at Maker’s Mark where it augments their natural gas, resulting in an approximate 25% reduction in natural gas consumption. The MFT effluent, along with the distillery’s process wastewater and sanitary waste, are polished by a modified activated sludge system with integrated clarifier and denitrifying capability prior to discharge into the adjacent river. According to Potter, Maker’s Mark selected Ecovation’s system because of its small footprint and because the high-rate anaerobic reactor did not require the retention time of regular anaerobic digesters. “We found a regular digester would require 10 to 13 days to treat our stillage, whereas Ecovation’s system can treat it in 6 to 8 hours,” Potter said. “Another reason we chose Ecovation was because they were willing to provide a turnkey approach. Ecovation handled the design from the stillage coming off the bottom of our stills all the way through to discharge in a local waterway. Their enthusiasm and breadth of knowledge within the wastewater/energy industry is what solidified our choice.”