Warner's win at The Footprint Drinks Sustainability Awards 2021
We’re still all a little bit in shock, but absolutely delighted to announce that we have won TWO 2021 Footprint Drinks Sustainability Awards. It’s official, we are the proud holders of the Waste Prevention & Management Award for the SECOND year in a row and the Stakeholder Engagement Award for the THIRD year in a row!
These awards are about celebrating initiative and innovation, business imagination and endeavour and they recognise organisations leading the way in the drinks industry so to win these awards means the absolute world to us.
At Warner’s, sustainability isn’t some fancy buzzword, it’s not a bloomin’ box ticking exercise or fancy publicity stunt. Sustainability is what we have to do. It’s our guarantee for the future and at the heart of everything we do.
Why? Well, because we believe that real tastes better. And it really bloomin’ does!
2021 Stakeholder Engagement Award
In 2021, we adopted a pro-active local approach, focusing on engaging our local community and our epic dream team with the creation of the Harrington Biodiversity Action Group. Uniting together with our local parish council and neighbours, we’ve been working to improve and create vital local wildlife habitats, completing surveys, hosting conservation charity lectures and undertaking climate mitigating activities including planting trees.
We are working to educate our team and community on environmental issues, building awareness of the importance and value of biodiversity in our local area and providing opportunities for action via our 1% for the Planet commitment. This summer saw us organise The Harrington Big Butterfly Count, supported by the Butterfly Conservation for Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire charity and further projects are to follow in the coming months.
2021 Waste Prevention and Management Award
We wanted to look at using food waste as a raw material to create our epic spirits and looked to substitute imported ingredients with locally sourced by-products from other food industries.
Replacing imported dried citrus fruits with fresh, waste peels from a local fruit factory, not only created a deliciously vibrant, fresh, zesty London Dry gin, but also diverts almost a tonne of discarded citrus fruit peels from landfill every year. 100% of our London Dry gin citrus flavour now comes solely from discarded peels, whilst our Lemon Balm gin citrus notes come solely from our own farm-grown lemon thyme, lemon balm and lemon verbena, botanicals we’re completely self-sufficient in.
Also included in this award is our new Trash & Treasure Spiced Botanical Rum, created using locally sourced discarded fresh grapefruit peel, overripe bananas and roasted dandelion roots.
Let’s be honest. For most farmers, gardeners and horticulturists, dandelions are a pain. A weed. So, when we announced we were planting acres of them across our fields a few eyebrows were raised, not least our Rural Estate Groundsman, Martyn! Dandelions are valuable for biodiversity, a fantastic early nectar source for pollinating insects, but also, when roasted, provide unique spiced notes not found in our native plants but perfect for our spiced botanical rum.
Find out more about our farm-grown spirits here and how we're helping to support the planet through our business ethics.
