Don’t go there. Too predictable. Resist the urge. Don’t lead a St. Patrick’s Day blog with the obvious expression that links the color of the holiday to the color often associated with the movement and profession engaged in making the air and water cleaner. Let’s skip it and go straight to the tasty part – the beer. 

Green beer is not about the color; it is often about the people with whom you choose to drink. Over 400 cities have sprouted informal “green drinks” gatherings of environmentalists and other people and professionals engaged in sustainability issues. The idea, which began in London, is now 20 years old, and practiced on a few continents. Cerveza verde, anyone?

This time last year, the Sierra Club Green Life wrote about some green beer companies, citing, among others, two CEI customers, New Belgium Brewery in Colorado and Brooklyn Brewery in…you guessed it, the original home of the baseball Dodgers. Devout followers of this blog should be well aware of Philly’s Yards Brewing Company, but it is Brooklyn that came up with one of my favorite wind-themed marketing puns: There’s Wind in Our Ales.

As all of these examples demonstrate, the key to green is not simply organic ingredients. As a Philadelphia-area resident, buying a local beer may be the most sustainable beer choice I can make, regardless of the other creative sustainability measures an individual brewery or larger brand may pursue. Still, from a bicycle-friendly work environment to recycling, forget for a moment that these companies make beer. They demonstrate how to make sustainability an ingrained quality of any business, and make that business successful.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, and now I’m off to prevent the use of “March Madness” puns in this blog…