What we're doing right
Eco-friendly whisky
27th December 2008
Raise a glass to drinks conglomerate Diageo, which is building a “green distillery” in Speyside, Scotland – one that will recycle its water, produce 15 per cent of the carbon emissions of an old distillery and cut the heating bill in half by burning used barley. The Roseisle plant, the first major distillery to be built in 30 years, is set to open early next year and produce more than 10 million litres of Johnny Walker a year.
Diageo has also announced a greener approach at its Cameronbridge distillery in Fife, with an anaerobic digester costing $120-million – the largest investment in renewable energy in Britain outside the utilities sector. It will recover electricity and energy from the distillery and use it to convert the leftover malt, wheat and yeast into biogas and biomass energy sources, preventing the emission of 56 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
“The scotch industry as a whole is looking at our environmental strategy,” says Campbell Evans of the Scotch Whisky Association.
“The production of Scotch depends on our natural resources so it is important for us.” The industry is in the process of deciding on environmental targets to 2020 and 2050, he says.
Published in The Green Report in The Globe and Mail