Cooper King Distillery has unveiled that its Dry and Herb Gins have become the first English Gins to be certified carbon negative. The two offerings from the Yorkshire brand remove more carbon from the atmosphere than is emitted.
In order to achieve carbon negative status, Cooper King reduced the carbon footprint of the Gins as much as possible, before offsetting the rest with verified carbon credits from Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard program. Furthermore, 1kg of carbon dioxide equivalent is offset per bottle.
The new offerings from the English brand follow in the footsteps of Scotland’s Arbikie distillery, which launched the carbon negative, pea based Nadar Vodka and Nadar Gin last year.
“Producing flavour-driven, sustainable drinks has always been at the core of what we do, because we believe drinking good spirits needn’t cost the Earth,” said Chris Jaume, the distillery’s co-founder. “After a year’s worth of hard work, and despite a pandemic, we’re delighted that we have been able to achieve carbon-negative status for our two core products.
“Reaching this milestone is a significant step in our plan to become a carbon-negative distilery. We value people, planet and prosperity, and through sharing our findings in our publicly available Carbon Report we hope to inspire others to make a positive difference.”
The sustainability conscious brand aso supports the planting of one square metre of native UK woodland for each bottle of gin made, through a partnership with the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust. Furthermore, Cooper King recently planted 30 juniper bushes on site that, once mature, could produce enough juniper for around 15,000 bottles of Gin per year. The brand has always had the earth on its mind, and was also the first distillery in Europe to sign up to environmental initiative 1% for the Planet.
The UK has been pushing sustainability in the spirits sector over recent years. Last month, it was announced that Bruichladdich won a grant to explore the use of alternative non-fossil fuels at its distillery. The Islay distillery’s funding is part of the United Kingdom’s £10 million (US$13.5m) Green Distilleries fund.
