Dunnet Bay Distillers
Environmental and sustainability policy
At Dunnet Bay Distillery we aim to continuously improve our environmental performance and minimise our environmental impact. We support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for a peaceful and prosperous society with a healthy planet and work on these through 5 key areas: carbon, water, people, waste and biodiversity.
Carbon
We will record and monitor our carbon impact and work towards reducing our footprint to Net Zero by 2030. We are looking at every aspect of the business in order to achieve this. In the meantime we will offset our footprint, not to detract from the work we need to do to reduce our emissions but to support projects that contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals.
Water
Without water there isn’t life. This essential resource must be preserved and we aim to reduce our consumption as much as possible through careful usage and innovation.
People
We support fair treatment for all people involved in producing our products. We hope to inform and inspire our staff and visitors about their impact on the environment and ways in which we can help each other to achieve this. We also want to support our community through collaborative projects and those further afield that are adversly effected by the impacts of climate change. We want to see a more just world where everyone gets the chance of a bright future.
Waste
We will work to reduced our waste by using the waste hierarchy with particular emphasis on reducing consumption, repairing and reusing. We will also commit to reducing potential waste that our customers face when purchasing our products.
Biodiversity
Climate change, loss of habitat and pollution are all driving biodiversity loss. We all have a responsibility to address this. As a company we rely on nature for our botanicals and grow and source our botanicals carefully. We plant our distillery garden with pollination in mind and support local projects including Blue Butterfly conservation and collaborations with the local biodiversity group.
Buying from Dunnet Bay Distillers
From our website to our waste here are some of the environmental things we are doing to improve our impact on the journey our gin and vodka takes to arrive in your glass.
OUR BOTANICALS
Many of our botanicals are grown on site by our super gardener Hanna, a keen ecologist who wont permit chemicals anywhere near the precious plants. Biodiversity is top of her list and the garden is a haven of bugs and bees. Some of our botanicals we have to buy in, some are organic, some are not, but all are sourced with care and attention.
OUR BOTTLES
Honestly, our bottles are beautiful but are not the easiest material to recycle. In fact, they get downcycled into aggregate unless you have come up with a brilliant reuse! We do try to minimise this by selling soap pumps to upcycle your bottle and encouraging the refilling of the bottles with our refill pouch turning your bottle into a bottle for life. We can also refill your bottle when you pop into to see us at the distillery shop.
CORKS
Our corks are currently made from a wooden top and a plastic shank but that’s about to change! Plastic is a petroleum-based material which takes 100s of years to degrade and so we were keen to remove that from our product. Going forward our corks will be made of natural materials. They will still be wooden topped but will have a natural cork shank. Natural cork is a really sustainable material, harvested by hand without having to cut down the tree. It can even be composted or used as mulch if you chop it into pieces!
CANS
Our cans are 100% recyclable in kerbside recycling. Aluminium can be endlessly recycled with 75% of all aluminium ever produced still in use today. Being both lightweight and endlessly recyclable along with our FSC certified pulp labels make it the perfect choice of our pre-mixed drinks.
REFILL POUCHES
Refill pouches reduce the amount of carbon emitted by being lightweight and so much easier to transport around. We have made it as easy as possible to return the pouches and we send them on for recycling. It’s not yet a circular process but we are being responsible for the waste we generate and ensuring the materials get a second life until we can make this circular. Read more about our refill pouches on our recycling page.
WEBSITE
Placing your order on our website should be a doddle and while you’re searching for the perfect bottle we’ve got the sustainability side of things covered. Our website is hosted on green servers which run from renewable where possible and carbon offset the rest. In 2021 we completed a carbon audit to see just how much carbon our website generates, and have since completed the first pass at reducing this. In 2022 we have planned a revamp behind the scenes to reduce this further, ensuring our website will be as low carbon as possible while still giving our customers a good user experience.
PACKAGING
All of the paper packaging we purchase is either FSC approved or made from recycled material. We now only purchase paper tape and we have removed plastic that we used to order in to fulfil orders. We do however receive plastic from items we purchase and we want to prolong it’s life as much as possible. We have a historic supply of air packs and recycled plastic tape that we are still running down. We’ve also invested in a cardboard shredder so you will soon be seeing this appear in orders to reduce the protective packaging we need to buy in and give cardboard a longer life before being recycled.
DISTRIBUTION
Our orders are sent out via Royal Mail and DPD. They are both working on their impact through the introduction of electric vehicles and DPD in particular have a wealth of information regarding this. Distribution will be one of the more difficult aspects to address as we need more infrastructure supporting this but we are watching this space and our recent move to DPD was for this reason.
So now your order should have arrived. All you need to do is pour that drink and sit back and relax knowing that we are working really hard to make sure you get to enjoy your gin or vodka without destroying the planet!
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