Is it payback time?

With nature increasingly under pressure from our desire to consume, is it time to look for ways to pay her back?

 

Isn’t nature brilliant!

Give it some sugar and it pays you back in booze.

Incredible stuff.

It should be a straightforward transaction between the three main kingdoms. Plants create sugar through photosynthesis. Fungi turn the sugar into alcohol and CO2. Animals consume the alcohol in ‘Spoons on a Tuesday afternoon after the bingo.

But the system is out of kilter. Our built-in desire to exploit a resource for personal wealth has placed nature under huge levels of stress, and we are paying an ever-increasing price as climate and environmental systems collapse around us.

Of course it’s not just the production of alcohol that has caused this, but given this publication’s focus on the topic, let’s look at some steps our industry can take to help fix the problem.

We all want to live on a healthy planet where nature thrives and the climate is under control.

That statement rings true regardless of whether you are Trump or Thunberg, and it applies to your customers as well.

One route to achieving this goal is to back the distilleries that are going all out to reduce their environmental impact. The methods they employ and the new processes they develop are carried out with no regard to their bottom line.  The reason they exist is to produce the most sustainable products they can in the hope that this quest will bring them a greater volume of custom from buyers and consumers who are searching for ‘better’ products.

Some methods they employ:

i) the use of cutting-edge technology and water-efficient distilling processes powered by onsite renewable energy sources

ii) using regenerative, organic grains that support soil health

iii) adopting true circular packaging so that their post-consumer recycled glass bottle is refilled many times before being recycled again

iv) allowing customers to refill any suitable bottle they already own, at the distillery door

v) limit their delivery to a 100-mile radius, only using electric vehicles charged from their onsite renewable energy sources

With these methods we can reduce the impact of the spirits industry, which is famously dirty and energy intensive, so that we can get close to the principles of doughnut economics; a proposed system of keeping industrial output within the bounds of planetary limits.

We are seeing distilleries like Two Drifters get close to this ideal, and you’ll see their products on back bars up and down the country. But for this method to drive real impact, these types of products need to be an everyday affordable option and not just for special occasions.

Where this quest for sustainability falls down is in the promises that many brands make these days. Claims around sustainable packaging, the sourcing of botanicals, the use of leftover materials in production, the reduction of bottle weight, removing plastic or planting trees, all need very close scrutiny. This is especially so if the producer is claiming that their products are 100% sustainable—a position that’s impossible to achieve for any form of manufacturing.

Whilst many of these steps are laudable, they alone are not going to tip the balance back in nature’s favour, and feel more like rearranging the deckchairs on good ship Greenwash.

When we zoom out and look at the global trade in alcohol there’s one statistic that gives anyone who cares about a future liveable planet hope:

In 2023, global trade in beverage alcohol produced an estimated $254bn of net profit

That’s a lot of money, but why should it give us hope?

If there’s one thing that groups who are protecting the environment need, it's cash.  The rise of mission-based brands with climate-focused business models shows there are companies able to step in and redirect profit to causes that really need it.

In 2022 Patagonia declared that they exist solely to “save our home planet”, and they redirect 100% of their profit to that cause.

Who Gives A Crap has grown to be the UK’s third-biggest toilet paper company by giving 50% of its profits away.

Ecosia, the green search engine alternative, has a monthly turnover of $3m, half of which it is given straight back to tree planting projects. They reckon that every search on its engine removes 1kg of CO2 from the atmosphere.

As Chris Baker points out in his 2024 book Obsolete - How Change Brands are Changing the World, 60% of global GDP is spent on consumer packaged goods, and if we moved 1% of our spending to not-for-profit brands that would equate to $700bn per year.

Is the time right for an alcohol brand to step into the breach and do the same?  Can we use the abundance of entrepreneurial energy that our industry continues to display to create beautiful, bold products at the right price so they become a regular feature in your weekly shop?

Nature has been pretty good to us as an industry over centuries. Maybe it’s time to pay her back and stop chasing personal wealth as the only game in town.