Toasting Earth Day with New Zealand

A sustainable winery takes into consideration the environmental, social and economic aspect in order to create a long-term sustainable business. New Zealand has always been at the forefront of this movement setting an example.

Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ), the country’s sustainability programme, was founded in 1995. While SWNZ remains a voluntary programme, it has a very high participation rate: 96% of the national vineyard area and over 90% of wine production by volume is SWNZ certified.

Climate change has become an important preoccupation for the wine industry but for a long time, tracking the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) was not part of sustainable certifications. Once again, New Zealand sets a model. The country has made the commitment to be carbon neutral by 2050. This means that the country’s wine industry needs to work together in order to adapt and put in place initiatives to mitigate climate change. However, without measuring your GHG, you can’t reduce them. This is why a Life cycle analysis (LCA) approach ensures all GHG emissions in the supply chain of wine are accounted for, giving the New Zealand wine industry a complete picture.

I could not think of a better way to celebrate earth day than to make a toast to New Zealand for this incredible ambitious endeavour. It is all of the small collective gestures that can make a bit difference in the long term. The website of New Zealand Wine has a comprehensive page fully dedicated to climate change explaining their strategy. Hopefully, you can get inspired by it. Together, we can be the change.

To learn more about their initiative: https://www.nzwine.com/en/sustainability/focus-areas/climate/

Happy Earth Day!