Since this is Rum Renaissance week on Miami Beach, I thought I share a this story about the Cruzan Rum distillery on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It looks like the famous island rum company is getting a little help with a big upgrade to their facility. I’ll cheers to that.
U.S. Rum Industry: Setting New Standards for Environmental Protection
The U.S. Virgin Islands’ government and Cruzan Rum, owned by the newest Alliance partner, Fortune Brands, have come together to form a public-private partnership to help set a new U.S. rum industry standard for environmental protection with the construction of a new Cruzan Rum wastewater treatment system. The new facility, on the island of St. Croix, comes as part of the U.S. Virgin Islands government’s 30-year partnerships with its rum makers to modernize the industry and set new standards for sustainable rum production.
The state-of-the-art Cruzan Rum wastewater treatment plant will prevent the release of 150,000 pounds oxygen-demanding organic material, which impairs water quality, into the ocean and will cut fresh water consumption by almost 40 percent per proof gallon of rum produced. A new fermentation and distillation process will use advanced scrubber technology to recover ethanol, lowering emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by more than 90 percent. Mechanical vapor recompression will evaporate excess water, recycle that vapor, compress it and reuse the water, increasing energy efficiency. U.S. Virgin Islands Governor John P. deJongh, Jr. noted that through “the implementation of this modern production and filtration system we will finally see an end to the brown stain in the waters off of St. Croix.”
Picture 13The Virgin Islands government and Fortune Brands recognize the mutual benefits of collaborating to grow the Cruzan Rum brand; secure environmental and production benefits and significantly increase local government revenue that can be reinvested in economic development. The Alliance promotes these types of partnerships that achieve both environmental and economic benefits for local communities.
Good rum and a clean environment, I’ll drink to that.
Cheers,
RumShopRyan
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About the Author: RumShopRyan
