MBAX 6990 Week 5 Sustainability Strategy Options Example

Four Options for Quarry Hill, Sorted by Hart's Natural-Resource-Based View and Checked Against What the Brewery Can Already Do: Rinse-Water Recovery, Returnable Bottles, Both in Sequence or a Move to Cans

Student Name

Walden University

MBAX 6990: Capstone: Sustainable Business Practice and Strategies

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Four Options for Quarry Hill, Sorted by Hart's Natural-Resource-Based View and Checked Against What the Brewery Can Already Do: Rinse-Water Recovery, Returnable Bottles, Both in Sequence or a Move to Cans

The Framework

This strategy section drafts four options for Quarry Hill Brewing, the western Massachusetts craft brewery at the center of this capstone, and sorts them with the natural-resource-based view of the firm set out by Hart (1995). In Hart's account, a firm's dealings with the natural environment can become a source of advantage in three ways: pollution prevention, which lowers cost by cutting waste and emissions at the source; product stewardship, which takes responsibility for a product's effects across its life cycle; and sustainable development, which looks further ahead. The first two describe this capstone's projects closely. Each option is set out under the same four headings, so none wins by being described at greater length: what it involves, where it sits in Hart's framework, whether the brewery can already do it and what remains uncertain. All figures are illustrative.

Option 1: Rinse-Water Recovery

What it involves: a recovery system that captures the final rinse from tank and keg cleaning and reuses it for the next cycle's first rinse, at an estimated installed cost of about $150,000. Hart's framework: pollution prevention, cutting water use and wastewater at the source. Capability check: the brewery's maintenance team installed and runs the keg line, but it has no engineer to design a recovery system, so it would need a vendor to install and train. Uncertainty: low. Similar systems are common in the industry, and savings follow directly from the double charge for water and sewer identified in the situation analysis.

Option 2: Returnable Bottles

What it involves: heavier bottles designed for reuse, a bottle washer and changes to labels, with empties collected through distributors and the taproom, at an estimated cost of about $1.1 million including washer, bottle stock and line changes. Hart's framework: product stewardship, taking responsibility for the bottle after the beer is drunk. Capability check: the keg loop shows the brewery and its distributors can run reverse logistics, but the bottling line handles only new glass. Uncertainty: high. Its environmental benefit depends on how many trips each bottle makes, which depends on return rates that are unknown for this brand.

Option 3: Both, in Sequence

What it involves: rinse-water recovery first, then a returnable pilot in the taproom and home-state accounts, expanding only if return rates meet a set threshold. Hart's framework: pollution prevention followed by product stewardship, which Hart suggested can build on each other as a firm's environmental capabilities grow. Capability check: the first stage builds experience with water systems, which a bottle washer would need, since washers are heavy water users. Uncertainty: moderate, concentrated in the second stage, where the pilot is designed to reduce it.

Option 4: A Move to Cans

What it involves: a canning line replacing most bottling, at an estimated cost of about $650,000, with cans sold through existing distributors. Hart's framework: pollution prevention of a kind, since life cycle studies find aluminum cans carry a lower footprint than single-use glass bottles (Amienyo et al., 2013), though it does not take responsibility for the container after use. Capability check: no canning experience in house, and canning abandons the reverse logistics capability the keg loop represents. Uncertainty: moderate; the environmental gain over single-use glass is well documented, but whether it beats a well-run returnable system depends on trips per bottle.

What None of the Options Does

Hart's third strategy, sustainable development, asks firms to look beyond their own operations to the wider systems they depend on. None of the four options reaches the brewery's largest remaining footprint outside glass, the malt it buys from regional farms. Working with growers on lower-emission barley is outside this capstone's scope, as the first week's boundary set it, but the omission should be acknowledged: even the best packaging and water choices leave about a quarter of the footprint untouched. A later strategy could take it up once the projects here are proven.

The Options Compared

Table 1

Four Options on the Same Headings, Illustrative

Composite organization; costs illustrative.

Recommendation

The section recommends Option 3: rinse-water recovery first, followed by a returnable bottle pilot, with expansion only if returns meet a threshold set in the implementation plan. It beats returnable bottles alone because it starts with the certain, cheap project and tests the uncertain one before committing $1.1 million. It beats cans because it builds on the brewery's keg loop rather than abandoning it, and keeps cans as a fallback if the pilot's return rates prove too low. Elkington (1997) insisted that a sustainability strategy prove itself in money, environment and people together; the financial and social sections that follow will test whether this one does.

References

Amienyo, D., Gujba, H., Stichnothe, H., & Azapagic, A. (2013). Life cycle environmental impacts of carbonated soft drinks. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 18(1), 77-92. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-012-0459-y

Elkington, J. (1997). Cannibals with forks: The triple bottom line of 21st century business. Capstone.

Hart, S. L. (1995). A natural-resource-based view of the firm. Academy of Management Review, 20(4), 986-1014. https://doi.org/10.2307/258963