From cutting food waste, to championing re-use and refill, and going carbon neutral, this little list champions a few of my favourite booze brands making delicious drinks – and doing their bit for the planet at the same time.
1. Toast’s Beer
Toast are a London-based brewery who make beer using surplus bread (to replace virgin barley), therefore using less land, water and energy, and avoiding carbon emissions. They give all profits to charity, not shareholders, thus funding the systemic change needed to fix the food system.
I love their beer (and their ethos) so much, I put it on the bar at my wedding!
2. Hawksbill’s Caribbean Spiced Rum
10% of all profits from the sale of Hawksbill Caribbean Rum goes directly towards turtle conservation projects overseas and beach cleaning in the UK; they recently commitment to 365 days of litter picking and waste clean-ups at beaches and parks across the UK.
You can read more about their efforts to protect critically endangered marine creatures by clicking here. I was #gifted a bottle of this rum to help me celebrate Earth Day; the packaging looks bloody gorgeous, and I loved the warm vanilla notes – perfect with ginger beer and lots of ice.
3. St Davids’ Ramsey Island Gin
This unique Welsh gin contains botanicals hand-foraged from Ramsey Island, about 1 kilometre off St David’s Head in Pembrokeshire on the northern side of St Brides Bay. A donation from the sale of each bottle of Ramsey Island Gin goes towards funding wildlife projects on and around the island, all carried out by the RSPB.
We were given a bottle of this as a wedding present (St Davids is my husband’s fave place in Wales); it’s bloody lush.
4. Silver Circle’s (refillable) Wye Valley Gin
Silver Circle Distillery, in Catbrook, recently unveiled three new ways for trade customers and members of the public to refill bottles of its most popular, award-winning Wye Valley Gin. The new refill and reuse initiatives were revealed on World Refill Day, a global public awareness campaign, which aims to make it easier for people to find places to eat, drink and shop with less waste.
5. National History Museum’s Discovery Gin
London’s Natural History Museum recently launched a delicious new carbon-negative gin, created in partnership with independent York distillery, Cooper King. Herbaceous, refreshing and vibrant, the gin has a cool smoothness from its cold distillation, Discovery Gin is made using fresh basil, balanced with fragrant lemongrass and aromatic clove.
For every 70cl bottle, one kilo of carbon dioxide equivalents (including carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases) is removed from the atmosphere – the labelling and bottling into recycled glass is all done using renewable energy, too. Even the bottle’s seal is made in the UK from sustainably sourced wood cellulose, which will biodegrade in home compost in 12 weeks. What’s more, £1 from every bottle sold is donated to the distillery’s tree-planting charity partner, the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust.
In addition, every purchase helps the Museum care for its collection of 80 million specimens and supports 300 scientists to continue studying the natural world.
Keen to read more about sustainable booze? Check out this guide to lower impact beer from Ethical Consumer: ethicalconsumer.org/food-drink/shopping-guide/beer-lager.
