 |
| Roberto Serralles |
Puerto Ricans have long been known for
their love of rum, and particularly their love of Don Q. More than two-thirds of the island’s
population drinks this particular rum, which is distilled, manufactured, and
distributed world-wide from Destilería Serrallés headquarters in Ponce, Puerto
Rico. Not only known for quality
products, in the last decade the Serrallés family has made strides in
implementing sustainable technology and reducing their foot print on
the environment. This issue has
been reverberating throughout the spirit-making industry.
Many of these green initiatives came
directly from Roberto Serrallés, a sixth-generation distiller who left Puerto
Rico to become a teacher, but wound up back at his family’s distillery. “I
wanted to teach; that was my calling in life,” says Roberto Serrallés, “I knew
I wanted to teach at the university level, which requires a PhD, and that’s
part of why I ended up in Environmental Sciences. As I was writing my dissertation,
I got a call from Felix Juan Serrallés, Jr., my father and company president
and CEO. He said he needed help with the
distillery’s wastewater system, so, I was initially hired on as a contractor
and worked on this wastewater treatment system for years that we now have up
and running.”
Rum, and spirit-making in general,
produces a lot of wastewater. “When you distill rum, wastewater ends up being
five times the volume of the spirit produced”. “We want to take that wastewater and reuse
it, turn it into some form of energy, Serralles explains. I see
this as an extension of the process of rum-making, which begins with molasses,
a byproduct of sugar making.”
The Serrallés family began as sugarcane
farmers, and rum-making naturally evolved as a way to utilize the leftover
molasses. “We took a waste stream and turned it into
something value added,” says Serrallés. Eliminating wastewater runoff into
nearby waterways also aligned with a perspective on environmental stewardship
that Roberto learned during his PhD studies.
“Some of my guiding principles come from the field of industrial
ecology, specifically Marian Chertow, who teaches at Yale. Part of her work
looks at the lack of waste in naturally occurring systems and
suggests we should mimic that in industry.” “There is no waste in nature, and that is an
ideal system. So, how do we find a use for all our outputs?” This mission has led to significant changes
at Destilería Serrallés over the last decade. Serrallés focused his work on the
system the distillery uses for wastewater treatment, which several other
distillers now emulate. It captures
carbon dioxide released during the fermentation process and distributes it to
local soda producers, reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Wastewater from the distillation process has a
myriad of uses, finding its way into compost, biofuel, and irrigation water.
Don Q has also has completely eliminated wastewater discharge into nearby
oceans. “They came to us and wanted to
establish a partnership and we were thrilled. We monitor the water in Puerto Rico, and we
also do work protecting coral reefs, which are very sensitive to changes in
water temperature and nitrification.
These potential impacts from wastewater discharge at nearby
distilleries. Keeping wastewater out of the ocean keeps helps keep reef systems
healthy. In the future, Serrallés hopes
to continue developing sustainable technologies for Destilería Serrallés, and encouraging the
implementation of those methods industrywide. “Sustainability is not a
destination,” he says. “It’s a commitment to a continual process. We are
trying, and it’s about trying to be better every day.”
This is a great conceptual project,
especially when you consider that rum came about as a means of disposing of the
waste molasses from the sugar making industry.
