Located a few steps from the campus of Slippery Rock University, North Country Brewing Company would be a popular campus watering hole if it just offered $1 beer nights. But owner Bob McCafferty’s push for sustainability has struck a chord with patrons who appreciate the pub’s efforts to locally source its menu and beers, and to reduce its waste and energy use. McCafferty’s goal: a self-sustaining business.
Before the restaurant and bar opened in 2005, McCafferty and his wife Jodi spent seven years carefully restoring the 1835 building, which featured old-growth wooden timbers and a tin ceiling, to fully meet LEED standards. They added a living green roof that is still thriving. Now the business, which employs 55 workers, has extended the concept of recycling still further.
Grain used for over a dozen micro-brews, up to 850 pounds per batch, is re-used to feed 20 head of cattle at the Stoneboro farm McCafferty bought last year. Other non-meat waste is composted in a bin with hungry storm fly worms. Vermiculture cuts the 24 cubic feet of waste the restaurant produces monthly in half. The worm castings go, in turn, to SRU’s Macoskey Center for Sustainable Systems, where they are incorporated into the school’s organic gardens. A policy to charge customers 25 cents for corn-based takeout containers makes the packaging biodegradable, too.
McCafferty says that sustainable practices don’t reduce his business expenses, but that’s not his goal. “It pays off in different ways,” says the 41-year owner. “We make sense of it by doing it and enjoying it, and using local growers and purveyors.” Next month, McCafferty will harvest pumpkins at the farm that will turn up at the brewery in liquid form, as pumpkin beer.
Source: Bob McCafferty
Writer: Chris O’Toole
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