Introduction to Green Manufacturing

What is green manufacturing? Just by reading the word “green” we can immediately know that
it is related to the environment. Green manufacturing is generally the renewal of production
processes and the establishment of environmentally-friendly operations within the
manufacturing field. Crucially, it is basically the “greening”involved the manufacturing in
which workers use fewer natural resources, to reduce pollution and waste, save energy through
the discovery and development of new knowledge that reduce or eliminates the use of
hazardous substances in the design, manufacturing and application of chemical products or
processes, recycle and reuse material that are reusable and moderate emissions in their
processes. Therefore basically green manufacturing is to research, develop and utilize
technologies to lessen their impact on our environment. “Why is Green Manufacturing so
important?” Due to the recent global climate, humans have started to realize the vulnerability
of nature and the disasters that may come as it reflected from our negligence of the environment
and since our planet's natural resources are drying up, the use of green technology is becoming
the only knight in shining armour that can save us. “What are the benefits or advantages that
can be earn by green manufacturing?” Green manufacturing process is to protect and benefit
the environment but it can also render people benefits such as environmental benefits since the
main goal of green manufacturing is to reduce the waste to zero; it will definitely stop the
pollution. Company benefits since big brand company have social responsibility and
reputation.Technological benefits will be enhance as each of green manufacturing projects will
be promoted, economic benefits are also the advantages to green manufacturing since the
reusing of renewable energy and materials, it can reduce energy consumption and lower
manufacturing cost, recycling is also another way to go green as well, since recyclable products
will last longer than other product, not just economical benefits, health benefits are also one of
the advantages in going green since green manufacturing will reduce air pollution and
environmental toxin which can affect our body’s immune system that fights infections that
could lead us to diseases and fatal illnesses. Green manufacturing have become one of the most
critical challenges that we must adhere to stop from destroying our environment and not just
people, but also global companies are trying to make their manufacturing process
environmentally friendly and branded companies started to investigate in its sustainability
throughout their entire business operations, including things that customers can readily see and
even the thing they cant. They also make green investments and create spaces for green
products. Companies also have started to reuse reusable materials to reduce waste and
including manufacturing process they make sure that green manufacturing comes first.

Background of the company

The company our group has visited was, Carlsberg Malaysia and we interviewed Ezra Low
who is the Corporate Communications and CSR Manager in Carlsberg Malaysia. Carlsberg
Malaysia was founded in December 1969 and Carlsberg Brewery Malaysia Berhad began
brewing Carlsberg green label beer locally started in 1972. Since 1972, Carlsberg Malaysia has
become very popular amongst Malaysian beer consumers and many of the consumers stated
that it is probably the best beer in the country. Carlsberg Malaysia is basically the established
brewery which manufactures and distributes beers, stout and other malt-based beverages.
Subsidiaries such as, Carlsberg Marketing Sdn. Bhd. in Malaysia, Carlsberg Singapore Pte. Ltd.
in Singapore and an associated company Lion Brewery(Ceylon) PLC in Sri Lanka carries out
the sales and distribution of brands. In addition to its flagship brand, Carlsberg Malaysia
showed a wide range of interest on international brands, such as Carlsberg Special Brew and
SKOL and Carlsberg Smooth Draught. Carlsberg also continued their business and beer
products by offering premium brands such as Kronenbourg 1664 Blanc, Somersby Apple and
Blackberry Cider, Asahi Super Dry and Corona Extra, along with stouts such as Connor's Stout
Porter and Royal stout, Jolly Shandy and the non-alcoholic Nutrimalt are also one of the
favourites in the Carlsberg Malaysia portfolio. Carlsberg Malaysia devoted to grow its business
until today in their most efficient manner possible by increasing resource efficiency and not
just devoting the growth of business. Carlsberg Malaysia also are promoting Carlsberg products
sustainably by encouraging responsible sale and consumption as well.

Background of Green Manufacturing

Since when, does “Green Manufacturing” became so important to our industry? It is
actually hard to pin down a specific time or date for the start of the modern environmentalist
movement. For the past many years, the overriding focus of our civilization has been on growth
of our industry and financial profit and it is clearly seen that holding these priorities came at a
cost to our planet. Although, the fact which the environmentalists have long encouraged for a
more eco-friendly approach to all aspects of life, the idea of “going green” been such great
importance several years ago. With the exasperation of the environment and as population
grows, it became a concerned in our industry. Green Manufacturing’s ultimate goal is to
balance the manufacturing and the ecosystem. Since Green manufacturing is not a brand new
idea to put forward during the past few years, going back to the commencement of Industrial
Revolution, some of the scholars figured it out what negative effects manufacturing had on
our environment and recently more and more of the corporations have put Green manufacturing
into a vital strategic location. However, small minority of people were concerned enough in
using solar water heaters and wind turbines. In early 17th century till the beginning of the 18th
century, with invention of steam engine, the industrial age has started in human society.
Against with the agricultural society. From new knowledge and technology and product created
by the industry, it has brought rapid changes as it has decreased the death rate and increase
human survival and it achieved the world’s population rapid expansion. Since people are not
satisfy with the basic material demands anymore nowadays and constantly pursuing more
abundant and better material and physical enjoyment which leads to fast consumption of
resources and energy. Especially, the consumption of fossil resources and other non-renewable
resources caused the large emission of the pollutant. It not only drives to the rapid depletion of
natural resources but also results in the deterioration of our ecological environment.

At present, more than 80 countries and 1.5 billion people are facing the problem of lacking of
fresh water and among 80 countries, 26 countries with 300 million people among them are in
trouble of completely lacking of fresh water. It was predicted also that 3 billions of people will
be lacking of freshwater and more than 500 mainstream rivers would be exhausted with no
water. Additionally, acid rain pollution causes the reduction of forest area, Greenhouse effect
causes global warming, depletion of ozone layer causing the ultraviolet light damages and
rapidly increasing garbage causing land and water pollution and people started to be aware of
AQI as in ( Air Quality Index) which is actually air pollution. The beginning of all of these
problems goes back to industrial revolution which is the beginning of manufacturing industry.
In the early 1906s, systematic researches on the relationship between human society and the
natural world revealed the serious conflict between human and nature. In 1962, One of the
American biologist named Carson published, “Silent Spring” which illustrated a shocking case
to tell the harmfulness of using large pesticide and humans started to be aware of negative
effects on industrialization and on 1972, UNHEC (United Nations Conference on the Human
Environment) announced the “Declaration on the Human Environment” which requires human
to protect our environment while developing and utilizing it.

(World Energy
Consumption, 1 EXA =
1* 20^15)

Picture above shows the world energy consumption which rapidly increased after 1850s. As
we can see crealy, that the energy resources used out by human within 100 years have surpass
the sum of all the energy consumption of all previous time. Most of the energy resources that
have been used are coal. oil and natural gas.

During 2002, the World Summit on Sustainable Development approved the “World Summit
on Sustainable Development Plan of Implementation” by the United Nations which was held
in Johannesburg. The plan of this work was to develop the common theme for mankind and
further present the economics, social and environments are the main three pillars of sustainable
development.

Manufacturing also involves a series of industries of national economy which are; mechanism,
electronic, chemistry, food, war, industrial and etc which are the pillar industry of creating
human’s wealth, the fundamental of social material and divine civilization and which are the
process that energies turn into industrial products and consumer goods which can be used by
people. However, it will still produce some waste and since such wastes are a part of
manufacturing resources which have been not used it can also be called as waste resources.

On one hand, manufacturing or pillar industry will help human to accumulate wealth and on
the other side, it is one of the main reason of environmental pollutions nowadays. Therefore,
to reduce urgent environmental problem, one of the significant ways is to minimise the
consumption of the resources and pollution during the production and this is where “Green
Manufacturing” enters. Which is now considered as an imminent way to reach modern
enterprises. From the researches carried by the experts from all over the world, “Green
Manufacturing” is one of the fundamental and important methods to put our environmental
pollution to an end or at least to reduce it and it is the key to control the source of the pollution.
It is basically the strategy of developing a sustainable modern manufacturing of human society.

Objective of Green Manufacturing

The objectives of Green Manufacturing is actually very clear, The objective of “Green
Manufacturing” is to minimise the negative impact on the environment and maximise the use
of secondary resources which are recyclable and utilize the resources from product design,
manufacturing, packaging, transportation,and the use and of the recyclable products.Obviously,
in addition to the main objectives of Green Manufacturing, is to terminate all different kinds
of pollutions and to make our environment more eco-friendly. The ultimate goal of Green
Manufacturing is to coordinate the enterprises development and social benefit.

Nowadays situation of Green Manufacturing

During the past years, environmental problems of manufacturing system or the process of
manufacturing, a series of the concepts and the patterns of manufacturing, which can be
divided into four layers and it is shown below :

The four layers of the Green in manufacturing

- The first component which is the Environmentally Neutral Manufacturing which is

placed at the bottom of the triangle, this is where there is neither negative nor positive
effects that give impacts on the current environment and in other word we can conclude
it is neutral.
- On the second layer which is coloured purple which includes Green Production,
Cleaner technology and Cleaner production. It is referring to the pattern of
manufacturing which not only do no harm to the environment but also give benefits to
our current environment. However, this only occurs in the manufacturing processes
other than other processes in the product life cycle such as the design of the product,
the usage of the product along with the recycle disposal.
- Continued to the third layer, Which are cleaner manufacturing, Environmentally
Conscientious manufacturing and etc. This is where Green Manufacturing comes in and
where Green exist all through PLC, manufacturing or process of production, product
design, the usage of product and recycle of disposal are included.
- Last but not least which also the highest component ,which contains Ecologically
Conscious Manufacturing. This is where not only is green in the whole PLC but also
 includes the importance in the balance between the development of products together
including other manufacturing systems and the environment and ecosystem to reach a
sustainable developing system.

Objectives of the Company, Carlsberg Malaysia

Based on the interview, Mr Ezra Low had informed us that they were setting up a program
named as ‘Together Towards Zero’. The program itself focused on the key sustainability areas
of their company. The program consisted of four major ambitions which were, ZERO
CARBON FOOTPRINT, ZERO WATER WASTE, ZERO IRRESPONSIBLE DIRNKING
and ZERO ACCIDENT CULTURE. We only focused on ZERO CARBON FOOT PRINT and
ZERO WATER WASTE as this were part of our assignment. Carlsberg aimed to achieve
ZERO carbon emissions at all of their outlets breweries by 2030. By doing so, the breweries
process will be using renewable energy as their main sources of energy by eliminating the
usage of coal energy. Moreover, when it came to zero waste water management, the company
will be focus more on optimising the packaging and assembling line where most water waste
occur. There were some progression that had been applied on which were recycling of final
discharge water from the waste water treatment plant for reuse in rough cleaning applications
such as crate washing and screen cleaning, recycling and reuse of reverse osmosis discharge
water for drainage and rainwater collection for toilet flushing and floor cleaning.
Image above was the aim of Carlsberg Malaysia hope to achieve.

Manufacturing process and product

In the production line of the Carlsberg, fermentation and pasteurisation to bottling and kegging
have been followed with the guidelines and quality control standards depart by the Carlsberg
Breweries international. Worldwide of the Carlsberg breweries are all administered and
monitored by the on-site quality control section which can ensure the production of beer in the
highest standards, uniform quality and taste. Based on the interview, most of the equipment in
Carlsberg Malaysia are using from 1969 due to their high operating efficiency condition. The
bio gas generator is also invented 10 years ago to ensure all the systems are still working due
to the black out. The process of brewing in the Carlsberg is natural and no additives. The raw
materials contain in the Carlsberg are water, barley malt, hops and yeasts instead of using the
GMO raw materials. This shows that the product is not harmful to the human body and the
environment due to the raw materials are organic. The followings below shows the raw
materials:

Malt
The malt is produced from the barley by the process of germination in a limited period of time
and dried by a slight roasting. The malt is the source of carbohydrates, degraded proteins,
vitamins and a few of enzymes. The malting condition can be increase by using a good quality
and special varieties of barley.

Hops

On the other hand, the hops can be gotten form the climbing with male and female flowers.
However, only female flowers are used to give the beer with the characteristic traditional
bitterness. The bitterness of the beer is depending on the hop rate and the bitterness range of
the beer from bitter to aromatic is contribute to the flavour and aroma of the beer.

Yeast

Yeast is a single-celled micro-organism which reproduces rapidly by dividing. The

fermentation is using the yeast to convert the sugars of the wort into the alcohol and carbon
dioxide. In 1883, Carlsberg was the first brewery in the world to use the pure yeast cultures
which developed by the Emil Christian Hansen in the Copenhagen. The function of the own
strains of yeast is to control of the fermentation process.

Water
Lastly, the water is the major raw material which contain 90 percent in terms of quantity. The
flavour of the beer can be effected by the quality of the brewing water. The Carlsberg in
Malaysia contain their own tube wheels which are getting 70 percent to 30 percent of the water
from the ground.

The process of the beer and packaging

Wort Preparation

The milling is the first process which steeped the malt with water and crushed in the mill to a
grist of suitable fineness to form the mash. In this case, the crushing process need to be cared
to ensure the husk are not damaged which used as the filter bed for separating the spent grains
from the wort during lautering. Second process is mashing which pumped the mash to the
heated mash tun with the pre-set time-temperature programme to convert and dissolved
substances from the malt in the brewing water. The mashing caused the malt enzymes to break
down from the starch to sugars and from proteins to amino acids which are essential for the
yeast. All the factors such as temperature, temperature, pH, and length of time of the mashing
are controlled by the system to create optimum conditions. The image below shows the
mashing process:

After the mash is completed, the spent grains is a raw material which separated the wort in the
lauter tun with a porous filter bed formed by the husks. The residual extract in the filter bed
and leached out with sparging water. However, the “spent grains” are removed to the spent
grains tank and sold as cattle feed. The image below shows the wort separation process in the
lauter tun:
The following step of the wort is transferred to the wort kettle for boiling process. The wort is
boiled with the hops which releasing some bitter substances and oils that are dissolved in the
wort. All the enzymes are also inactivated during the wort boiling process due to avoid the
continued breakdown of the proteins during the fermentation process and the wort is purified.
The unstable colloidal protein coagulates and precipitates the trub. The bitterness of the wort
will be occurred through isomerisation of hop alpha-acids. The wort is now concentrated due
to the unwanted flavour compounds is evaporated from the wort through the boiling process.
The image below shows the wort boiling process:

The wort is clarified and transferred to the Whirlpool where the precipitate the trub obtained
during the boiling process are separated from the wort after the boiling process. The wort is
now free and clear with all the particles to enter the fermenting vessel. The particles carry some
of the lipids which contain high concentration with a marked influence on the formation of
other flavour components from yeast during the process of fermentation. The image below
shows the wort clarification in the whirlpool:

The final process of the separation wort is a cooling process which using the plate heat
exchanger to cool down the hot wort and the hot water is collected for the use of the brewing
water.

FERMENTATION
The hot wort is transferred to the fermentation tank when it has been reached to the
fermentation temperature. During this transportation process, the yeast and sterilised air which
contain oxygen are added to assist fermentation. In this case, the function of the oxygen is to
support the development of the yeast to a state and amount capable of fermenting wort
efficiently. During the process of fermentation, the yeast is metabolised the fermentable sugars
of the wort to form the alcohol and carbon dioxide. The fermentation vessel will be cooled
down to maintain the desire fermentation temperature due to the heat is created during
fermentation. The carbon dioxide is collected and cleaned during fermentation process for the
purpose of reuse in the brewery. The yeast is transferred to the yeast storage and cropped after
the fermentation is completed and the liquid now can be called as beer for the first time. The
yeast is produced in excess during the process of fermentation and some of the yeast has been
reused for the new batch of wort. The remainder of the yeast also being discharged and treated
as a by-product.

BEER CLARIFICATION AND COOLING

The beer is pre-clarified passing through the centrifuge to remove any yeast remnants and is
then cooled under a temperature of about -1.5 degree celcius after the fermentation is completed.
In this case, the cooling of beer prior to clarification is important in favour to their self-life due
to a forced precipitation of haze particles takes place at this stage instead of in the bottle.
BEER FILTRATION

The beer is going through the filtration process which can obtain the specified low levels of
initial haze in the beer and to facilitate extended sell-life after the cooling process. The beer is
passed through a kieselguhr which can be called as diatomaceous earth to filter the following
beer by the sheet filter. The beer is in a form of carbonated before achieve the finished product
specification for carbon dioxide and sent to the bright beer tank. The filtered beer is transferred
to the bright beer tanks where are ready for packaging after the filtration process is completed
by pumping the beer to the packaging area where it is bottled, canned or kegged.

In the packaging process, the empty crates are passed through the bottling plant where they are
removed from the pallets by the automatic depalletiser. All the empty crates are transferred to
the visual inspection to check the present of broken or crowned bottles and ensure the bottles
are safe to be used. The crates go to the decorating machine and all the bottles are taken out
from the crates. Then, the empty bottles transfer to the bottle washing machine where the
bottles are repeatedly washed in water with the caustic soda solution and washed three times
with clean water.

All the good quality bottles are going through the electronic control which can detect and avoid
all the unlikely cases where bottles have not been properly cleaned, contain foreign objects or
have a broken neck. After the bottles have been checked, the bottles are transferred to the filler
where the air is removed and the carbon dioxide pressure is added before they are filled with
beer from the bright beer tanks. In this case, the beer retains with its fresh taste for a long period
due to the absence of oxygen in the bottle. After the filling machine, the crown is affixed to the
bottle and crowing the beer to be released some carbon dioxide due to slight frothing by turn
which can be displaced with any air that may have entered the bottle after the filler. All the
filled bottles have been checked electronically to ensure that they have the right amount of beer.
Pasteurisation follows due to ensure the beer can be protected from micro-organisms which
may alter its taste. In result of pasteurisation, it guarantees the beer’s quality and taste. The
labels are also attached by an automated labelling machine which are placed on the bottle neck,
on the front body and on the back body. On the other hand, the back label also includes the best
before date. The further electronic control is added for the filled bottles to check and ensure no
leakage in the process of pasteurization and labelling.
Then the filled bottles are placed in the clean crates by the crater. Lastly, the paper cover is
placed on the top and the filled crates are stacked on pallets automatically which are ready to
sale.

Extra Green Manufacturing Approach in terms of packaging, sales

Throughout the interview, Mr Ezra Low had provided some very valuable and interesting
actions that were currently running by the Carlsberg Malaysia.
First of all was the spent green policies, as well all know the process of brewing beer required
raw material such as yeast, beans and greens. After the process of fermentation, these raw
materials will be gathered and packed and sold it to the life stock farm. The farmer will then
fed those greens to their life stock, maximising the waste. Moreover, the raw materials will
also be sold to a special farm which raised black soldier fly. This type of fly will decomposed
and fed on the raw materials. Then, these flies will then lay egg and their lava were very rich
in protein. The farmer will then collect their lava and fed it to their live stocks.
Next, was the reuse of glass bottles. Carlsberg Malaysia will constantly recollecting all the
bottles from their merchandiser and brought it back to reuse it. The bottles will gone through a
series of process including washing, sterilization and waxing process. These process will
maximise the life span of the bottle before it cracked. One more thing to notice was that the
waxing process, Carlsberg Malaysia was actually a new type of waxing technology that
actually prolong the life of the bottles. A normal waxing bottles can be reused for a maximum
of 10 times but with this new type of waxing technology, the life span of the bottles will be
double which will be around 20 times. The important note was the new waxing technology, the
wax was environmentally friendly, it was easy to decompose and release zero chemicals to the
environment,
Next, Carlsberg Malaysia also applied some sort of new technology to their bottle labels. As
we all know the labels on the bottle contained ink that was harmful towards the environment.
So, they had come up with a new solution by applying a new ink which did not contained any
harmful chemicals inside of it. Moreover, a new invented cap was applied to the bottles. It was
called Fresh Cap which will absorb the oxygen that was release from the beer, keeping it fresh
for a longer period. The Fresh Cap can be found on every bottles of Carlsberg product. Since
it kept the beer last longer and stay fresher, so there were likely a smaller chance consumer will
threw away their beer which lead to minimisation of waste.
Impact of green manufacturing process
The impact of green manufacturing process in Carlsberg’s Malaysia was significant in terms
of business aspect but lesser when it came to environment. From the aspect of business, it
allowed Carlsberg Malaysia built up a good reputation in the industry as they were practising
on green manufacturing process. This brought Carlsberg’s Malaysia overall a good economic
growth and business opportunity. From the aspect environment, since Carlsberg’s Malaysia
brewery process and machine was old and if they want to replace with new machine it will
caused a fortune, but they were still trying their best to achieve the goals of manufacturing
process from different section of process. From Mr Ezra Low, he claimed that part of the energy
that were used by machine was from bio gas generator, which they recycle all the spent green
and made them into bio gases as energy source. This helped the environment by consuming
lesser electrical energy and natural gas energy since bio gas energy is recyclable. Moreover,
they implemented some pretty brilliant ideas as mentioned above which did help to preserve
the environment.

Future Planning
Speaking from Mr Ezra Low, the company aimed to achieve zero carbon foot print which was
already succeeded in their Sweden outpost, but in Malaysia the process will took years and
years in order to succeed because he claimed that Malaysia itself was not that advance to adapt
in such trend. Besides, for their base office which was located in the same area as the
manufacturing factory, they aimed to make it fully automated which means the air-conditioning
system, light system, water system were all automated. When there were no people, it will
turned off automatically in order to achieve cost saving and energy saving purpose. Besides,
the company planned to include solar energy in their future planning since solar energy is a
clean and sustainable energy. Moreover, for the packaging part, the company planned to
introduce a new type of packaging strategy called ‘Snap pack’. The snapback basically was a
type of gum that sticks the beer together and when consumer want to enjoy their drinks, they
can simply just snap it from the rest and enjoy it. This helped reduce the usage of plastic
because the traditional packaging used lots of plastic. After all this ‘Snap pack’ was still in
experimental stage, haven’t yet introduce to the market.

Interaction with the company

The images below showed the interaction of email with the Carlsberg industry:
The image below showed the interview section with the manager Mr Ezra Low, Corporate
Communication and CSR of the Carlsberg industry:

Conclusion

In short, we are beyond grateful that Carlsberg Malaysia for giving us this opportunity to make
this interview possible. Overall it was a great experience for having this interview with
Carlsberg Malaysia as the representative of Carlsberg Malaysia, Mr Erza Low provided us a
lot of valuable information and tons of help in completing our assignment. With this chance
we are able to learn and understand every process of what Carlsberg Malaysia has been doing
and gained a great insight about it. Moreover, green manufacturing was a very vital aspect to
look deep into as it represents the future of our mother earth. Hopefully, each and every
industries of Malaysia will response to the call of Green Manufacturing, creating zero waste
and a healthy environment for our people.

Referencing
1. https://carlsbergmalaysia.com.my/#sustainability
2. https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/edible-innovations/beer4.htm
3. https://mmbr.asm.org/content/77/2/157
4. https://firstwefeast.com/drink/learn-how-to-brew-beer-with-these-fun-animated-gifs