13th July 2026
Written by Rachel Wallace
Robinsons Brewery is a proud family-owned brewery and pub business rooted in Stockport, Greater Manchester, with a story that has been brewing since 1838. Today, we brew a range of traditional and modern beers and operate a large estate of 250 Managed and Pub Partner pubs across the North West of England and North Wales. Alongside great beer and hospitality, we have a long-standing commitment to quality, community, and doing business responsibly. We started our Carbon Literacy journey back in June 2023, shortly after our first sustainability focused role was created in the business.
As we began formalising our sustainability and emissions reduction journey, we knew that bringing our people with us would be the key to making it meaningful. Carbon Literacy gave us the perfect starting point: practical, positive, and rooted in the idea that everyone can make a difference. By starting with board members, executive management, and key company purchasers, conversations about carbon, energy, waste, and better choices quickly began to ripple through the business. Sustainability became less of a distant ambition and more of an everyday habit, woven into our company ambition and underpinned by a simple value: ‘do the right thing’.
We delivered Carbon Literacy face to face at our head office in groups of 20–25, led by our Sustainability Lead, who first completed Carbon Literacy training at Manchester Metropolitan University. The sessions mixed presentation, group activities, lively discussion, and real examples from both home and work, helping different learning styles feel included. As ideas emerged, we captured them as a shared bank of possible actions, giving learners plenty of inspiration when creating their personal and workplace pledges. No question was brushed aside: if the room did not have the answer, we parked it for research during a break.
Our biggest challenge at first was a familiar one: ‘This feels like a big time commitment, and I’m not sure how it relates to my job. I know climate change matters, but what difference can my actions really make?’ The first hour is like a warm-up, as people settled into the topic and found their way in. Once the ‘why’ clicked, the energy in the room changed. Learners became curious, practical, and keen to get involved. After the first cohort completed the course, the buzz spread quickly by word of mouth, and colleagues began asking when they could join the next session.
Since our initial roll-out of Carbon Literacy, the momentum has grown across the business. A group pledge involving our training and brewing teams led to the creation of environmental awareness training for every colleague, from pub teams and draymen to brewers and support office staff. The result is a shared understanding of Robinsons’ journey to Net Zero emissions, and a clearer sense of how every role can contribute.
In our pubs, even the small details are changing. Pump clips for our guest and craft ales are now printed on FSC-approved wood instead of plastic. They can be reused by the construction industry or biodegrade naturally, helping us move away from fossil-derived plastics. The same colleague who brought this pledge to life also helped introduce returnable deposit cups to Stock Party, an annual street celebration in Stockport hosted in Robinsons’ brewery courtyard.
Our operations team also turned insight into action by installing electricity monitoring across all Managed pubs, right down to appliance level. This means teams can spot opportunities to cut consumption, improve efficiency, and see the impact almost immediately. Since installation, electricity efficiency has improved across the pub estate, with most sites also reducing overall consumption while increasing sales.
Our brewery team has taken Carbon Literacy one step further by turning learning into major operational investment. Plans are underway to retrofit carbon capture technology into the brewery, helping reduce emissions from the brewing process, alongside investment in a nitrogen generation plant to provide nitrogen for beer top pressure. Together, these projects show how Carbon Literacy has supported bigger, more technical decisions that can reduce reliance on externally supplied gases and embed lower-carbon thinking into the heart of our brewing operations.
A pledge from our area managers sparked another practical step: sustainability champions in each Managed pub. These champions give colleagues a local point of contact for ideas, questions, and shared progress on energy efficiency and waste management, helping environmental sustainability feel visible, achievable, and part of everyday pub life.
We have also seen behaviour change beyond the workplace. Feedback and observations show colleagues walking or cycling to work more regularly, reducing single-occupancy car journeys to off-site meetings and showing how Carbon Literacy can turn awareness into practical everyday choices.
For Robinsons, sustainability is not a side project; it is part of protecting a business, a pub estate, and a community legacy that has been built over generations. The changes inspired by Carbon Literacy sit naturally alongside our values of responsibility, integrity, and care for the future. They help us turn ‘do the right thing’ into practical decisions that support our people, our pubs, our communities, and the generations still to come.
Looking ahead, we plan to keep Carbon Literacy alive by delivering training up to three times a year and extending the opportunity to our wider pub community. This includes managers, sustainability representatives from our managed pubs, and business leaders from our Pub Partner estate. Our next step is to develop a more pub-focused course, train sustainability representatives, and support them to continue the journey by delivering training within their own teams. In this way, Carbon Literacy will keep growing from a single course into a shared movement across Robinsons, and beyond into our communities.
