14 DAY TRIAL // According to an announcement made earlier this month by the Scotch Whiskey Association (SWA), a group that includes the most renowned manufacturers in the industry, Scottish distillers, makers of many of the iconic Scotch whiskeys, will apply regulation that would ensure their carbon emission will be reduced by more than 80 percent by 2050, the global conservation organization WWF reports. The move, the report says, would be equivalent to taking 235,000 cars off the road, and not releasing the amount of greenhouse gases that the vehicles would otherwise emit.
“The challenge is there from climate change and we need to respond to that. Our industry has been there for 500 years, and we want it to be around for another 500 years,” the SWA Operations Committee Chairman David Rae explained. He is also the managing director of the North British Distillery Company (NBDC), in Edinburgh, the UK. The NBDC is already involved in a number of ecological projects, including providing hot water from its post-distillation processes to nearby schools, thus helping the institutions displace 1,400 tons of carbon dioxide every year.
In an agreement it recently signed with a city council, it will send about 1.5 megawatts of thermal power to a newly built school, for a ten-year period. This will keep students and staff warm during the harsh winter months in the region, while at the same time doing that in a sustainable way. The Company is also considering making radical changes in its distillation processes, and moving to an anaerobic digestive process, which would ensure that the byproducts of its distillation stages are, in fact, a renewable source of energy. Rae explained that the distilleries could thus power themselves, saving an estimated 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year.
“Scotch whiskey is world renowned and we welcome plans to reduce the environmental footprint of each and every dram. We particularly welcome the fact that they have set themselves targets to reduce their impact. Since the whiskey industry relies on Scotland's clean environment for its main ingredients, it is important the industry takes steps to reduce its potential impacts,” Dr. Richard Dixon, the director of WWF Scotland, argued.