Teaming up with Greenspark
Do You Really Care?
The wine industry, though mostly a green enterprise, has a number of heavy environmental impacts.
Water is used in many vineyards, and in vast quantities in all wineries; glass bottle production requires huge heat from coal-fired furnaces; many of the largest vineyards still use chemical treatments, pesticides and non-environmental additives; diesel-powered tractors carry grapes to wineries, most of which are not carbon-neutral; ageing vessels are made from stainless steel, concrete or wood, each leaving a hefty footprint; polluting lorries and ships take the wines to our warehouses where diesel forklifts pack it away. Packaging uses cardboard, labels use paper, closures use metal or cork or more glass, and we all know that we are a long way from all of this getting recycled.
It's not a good look.
We decided to do something about it and teamed up with Greenspark to try and find ways to offset our - unintentionally - growing carbon footprints. They are taking about 1% from our sales figure and investing it in three different types of project in parts of the world seriously impacted by climate change. These projects are really special because they give back to the planet but also to the local communities in which they are based, empowering those worst affected by the changing climate to earn a living as they directly work to change the climate for good.
The projects that The Allotment support means that your orders support:
- The Eden Reforestation Projects employing local communities in nursery projects in Madagascar, Haiti, Nepal, Indonesia, Mozambique, Kenya, Nicaragua and Honduras;
- RIPPLE Africa, a registered charity under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, that is changing household cooking stoves in countries like Malawi to be less fuel intensive, decreasing carbon output and employing local communities to build the ovens using local, natural materials;
- Wind Farms in the Philippines;
- Hydro Electric Dams in Chile;
- Plastic Bank® and their wonderful employment of communities in Haiti, Brazil, the Philippines, and Indonesia earn a fair, sustainable income by collecting plastic waste.
Which means that YOU support these projects.
Which means that YOU are changing the climate for good by supporting us.
You can see how many trees you plant, how much carbon is saved and how many bottles you gather on each of your orders: it's typically 1 tree, 10kg of Carbon and 2 plastic bottles.
In turn, WE continue to commit to supporting carbon neutral and organic wineries, using recycled, recyclable and biodegradable packaging, while also finding particularly delicious wines for you as well.
We are proud as punch to be the first wine company in Ireland to work with Greenspark because at the end of the day, it really does is answer the question above: Do you really care? Yes, we do. And by supporting The Allotment, it shows that you do too.
Thank you.