Super Bowl, Organic Beers a Match

When the company began selling its wares in 1991, it vowed to "honor nature at every turn of the business." The brewery uses an extremely efficient brew kettle and energy-efficient design throughout the building. New Belgium processes its own wastewater to produce methane, which is then used to fuel an engine that supplies up to 15% of the brewery's energy needs. (They buy wind energy for the rest.) New Belgium also encourages bicycle commuting: Every employee earns a cruiser bike after his or her first year on the job.

Portland, Maine-based Peak Organic Brewing Co. has gone a step beyond using organic ingredients. The brewery's Maple Oat Ale is made with local ingredients, including organic oats from Maine and organic maple syrup from Vermont. Peak's Espresso Amber Ale is the first Fair Trade-certified beer and is made with locally roasted, organic Fair Trade-certified espresso from Portland's Coffee by Design.

Don't forget the big guys: It might seem like microbreweries dominate the green beer market, but some of the larger companies are doing their fair share, too. In fact, Coors(TAP Quote) produced the first recyclable aluminum can in 1959 and instituted the first take-back program, offering a penny for each returned can. Fifty years later, Coors continues to take steps that cut costs and help the environment. Among other efforts, the company converts waste beer into fuel-grade ethanol that is added to gasoline and sells spent grains for cattle feed.

Anheuser-Busch, meanwhile, has been turning grain left over from the brewing process into livestock feed since 1899. Last year, it shipped an estimated 1.74 billion tons of grain to dairy farms throughout the country. The company also recycles aluminum cans through its Anheuser-Busch Recycling Corp. In addition, its breweries in Jacksonville, Florida, and Fort Collins, Colorado, use wastewater from cleaning brewery equipment to provide water and nutrients to company-owned resource-recovery farms. These farms grow canola, which is used in biodiesel, and alfalfa and other hay crops, which are used for animal feed.