12 • AGENDA
• THINK TANK
being green It’s not easy
Going green is all the rage these days, but how is the whisky world dealing with reducing its carbon footprint?
WORDS: TIM POWER O
n the face of it, the ‘green’ credentials of the whisky industry appear to be very good: from the purity of using local and natural raw materials to
recycling by-products. And in recent years, there has been a wave of green projects appearing in the media – from large-scale projects such as Diageo’s £65 million combined heat and power plant at Roseisle to headline-grabbing schemes such as the Bruichladdich car that runs on electricity created by using the waste products from the distilling process. Being seen to be green is a very fashionable
trend across all industries. But do these green schemes in the whisky world actually reduce the industry’s carbon footprint, and do they make commercial sense? Or is there a sense that some of them are more about being seen to tick the green box and perhaps benefit from some positive publicity in the process? The Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) says that its members have a strong history in sustainability. Julie Hesketh-Laird, Director of Operational & Technical Affairs, said: “The industry is rooted in sustainability, but although there was a feeling that we were already a very green industry, we thought collectively we could do more to build on this reputation. That’s why the industry came together to develop an industry environmental strategy in 2009, which is very much aligned to the
Scottish Government’s CO2 reduction targets and the expectations of consumers and green groups.” The SWA undertook a ‘life-cycle analysis’ of
THE SCOTCH MALT WHISKY SOCIETY
Scotch whisky, from the environmental impact of growing cereals, including factors such as fertiliser input, to the emissions created by transporting whisky to the markets around the world. This made interesting reading, as Julie
explained: “It established that 39 per cent of the industry’s impact on the environment came from production of whisky itself, while more than 50 per cent came from the supply chain [the network of companies involved in getting the product from supplier to customer] and the remaining 11 per cent from distribution. “That’s why, as an industry, we’ve tried to
tackle the production aspects first, as these are the areas we have most control over: energy, water and what we procure in terms of cereals.”
of Rothes Distillers Ltd (CoRD), which was established in 1904 to recycle the pot ale produced by the distilleries in the Rothes area. This later expanded into processing pot ale and draff into animal feed and today the organisation represents most of the major distilleries in Speyside. CoRD, through its joint venture Helius-CoRDe
A CONTINUED OVERLEAF
good example of the Scottish whisky industry’s long heritage in sustainability is The Combination
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