Toast Ale has been honoured with a Queen’s Award for Enterprise for Sustainable Development.

Toast Ale is a social enterprise set up in 2015 to tackle food waste. The brewery works with bakeries to prevent surplus bread from being wasted, using it to produce its popular range of craft beers. The circular economy approach to brewing also reduces the environmental footprint of the beer because less natural resources are required.

Toast was the first UK brewery to become a Certified B Corp. It has open-sourced its recipe and collaborates with breweries and bakeries all over the world to drive systemic change. All Toast’s profits go to charities fixing the food system.

Louisa Ziane, co-founder of Toast, said: “We’re incredibly proud to be one of 205 organisations nationally to be recognised with a prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise. We’re a small business but have had a huge impact over the past 5 years, preventing over 2 million slices of bread from being wasted whilst inspiring brewers all over the world to use surplus bread. Food production is the biggest contributor to climate change but one third of all food is wasted. We’re here to change that, over a pint.”

Now in its 55th year, the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are the most prestigious business awards in the country, with winning businesses able to use the esteemed Queen’s Awards emblem for the next five years. Applications for Queen’s Awards for Enterprise 2022 open on the 1st May 2021. For more information, visit https://www.gov.uk/queens-awards-for-enterprise.