Our Sustainability Story So Far
Our purpose is to create joy from grape to glass and that extends to our ESG ambitions
Virgin Wines takes sustainability seriously, but we’re aware we are on a progressive journey. Like everyone else within our industry, and across the world, we’re navigating an ever-changing and complex landscape that’s certainly not short of challenges. But we’re trying to do better than our best.
As an industry we are all facing the same global sustainability challenges. Climate change is threatening the world’s wine supply, and regardless of the work we do to prevent it, there’s still a likelihood viticulture could be adversely affected in the years ahead. From droughts that lead to wildfires to changes in biodiversity that threaten indigenous grapes, the breadth of the consequences we are facing is vast.
Challenges we’re working to mitigate:
• High carbon emissions from shipping wines across the globe. Transporting wines in bulk and bottling in the UK is a greener logistics solution compared with shipping cases but comes with its own set of problems, such as consumer perception and feasibility.
• Human capital. Companies strive for competitive pricing and high margins, but this cannot be at the expense of appropriate working conditions, and we must ensure there is a sustainable workforce throughout our supply chain.
• Supply and quality issues due to climate change. We are facing loss of wine regions due to increased temperatures and water shortages, which makes it harder to ensure sustainable actions are being taken due to a risk of a monopoly in certain regions.
• Social sustainability of increased alcohol consumption. As we drive for growth, we need to be aware of the effect of increasing levels of alcohol consumption on consumers' quality of life and educate people on those effects.
Environmental Sustainability
Our ambition is to operate in a way that brings joy to the planet, not just our glasses.
Carbon journey
We're proud to be committed to a near term SME science-based target approved with SBTi (Science Based Target initiative). Our target is to reduce Scope 1 and Scope 2 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions by 42% by 2030 (2021 base year) and to lower Scope 3 emissions.
We are also officially certified carbon neutral under internationally recognised standard PAS 2060. It is one of few officially verified routes to achieving the status and requires lengthy GHG emissions reporting as well as external auditing. As per PAS 2060 guidelines we declared 39.8% of our wine imports under Scope 3, Category 4. We are currently working on tracking all emissions under this category. Undergoing this process year-on-year allows us to be transparent about our operations and gives us a strong understanding of where our GHG emissions come from, allowing us to work on clear solutions to reduce them.
Learn more about our carbon neutral certification methodology here in our most recent sustainability report.
In 2022 we set a target to decrease our Scope 1 and 2 emissions in absolute terms by 25% in 2023. We are just shy of that number having lowered them by 18.4% and 28.7% respectively, totalling a 24.1% reduction overall. We brought down our entire emissions across all three scopes by an impressive 43% in 2023, as well as declaring 11.8% more wine imports in Category 4 (wine imports). These reductions can be attributed to many small actions such as installing LED lighting across our premises and increasing our bulk shipping (39.8% of wines compared to 28% in 2022).
You can see a table detailing our GHG emissions from 2022 and 2023 in our sustainability report here.
What else are we doing?
• We are proud members of the Sustainable Wine Roundtable and Harpers Sustainability Charter.
• We have rigorous recycling practices taking place across our sites, with 0% of our warehouse waste going to landfill. In 2023 377.45 tonnes were recycled or redirected to 'an energy from waste' facility.
• We are reviewing our suppliers to ensure all partners are acting in a sustainably responsible manner and have values that align with our own. This includes the introduction of a company-wide sustainable procurement policy.
• We'll continue to increase our bulk shipping and UK bottling. By working with Greencroft Bottling, which is a BRC Grade AA+ rated and a pioneer in sustainable practices.
• You may have noticed that we no longer have our big red boxes. While the new boxes may not be as bright, they are much better for the planet, made from 100% recycled materials and using over 70% less ink.
Looking Ahead
We’ve made a good start, and we plan to keep up the momentum
We understand that offsetting isn’t a permanent long-term solution to the climate crisis. We are currently only offsetting to recompense for the emissions we are yet to cut, while we work on doing just that.
We only select carbon compensation projects that we feel are worthwhile and believe that this action is currently better than inaction in our particular set of circumstances. We’re aware that the steps we take over the next decade will impact centuries to come, and we want to find enduring solutions to reduce carbon emissions from grape to glass.
Long-term we plan to shift our strategic focus to insetting. By generating real change within our own value chain, we will lower our GHG emissions and hopefully contribute to the creation of carbon reduction solutions for the wine industry as a whole.
Our focus on insetting will go beyond carbon emissions, however, and we will pay attention to other areas that put our environmental future at risk such as biodiversity. We’re in the process of conducting our first double-materiality assessment, so we can discover where our stakeholder priorities lie, and ensure we’re focusing on the environmental issues that are most important to them.
Sustainable Credentials
You’ll see some wines on our site have this ‘Sustainable Credentials’ badge. At the moment this means that the particular wine comes from a vineyard with an official sustainable certification. These vary from country to country, and some vineyards that are operating in a very sustainable way may not have one at all. Eventually we’d like to include these too but while we figure that out, we’ve marked up the ones that do have an independent credential and explained what it is in the wine’s description.
Social Sustainability
We want to look after our people as well as communities around the globe.
Virgin Wines strives to be a fun, supportive and inclusive place where people are proud to work. Outside of our own doors, we aim to help the wider communities within which we operate through charitable support.
Our core people principles are:
A few things we’re proud of:
• We offered employees a LGBTQ+ Awareness Training course and many were awarded certificates of continuing professional development on the topic.
• Our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) offers access to fully funded counselling sessions, as well as a range of services offering help and support with personal and workplace matters. In the last year 13.5% of employees have used the service.
• We have successfully implemented a new HR system to allow employees instant access to policies and systems like our EAP.
• We provide funded access to external courses relevant to employees’ career development as well as offering internal training. All employees are given the opportunity to complete Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) qualifications.
• Each year we host a summer party and a Christmas party to bring all employees together and thank them for their hard work. We’ve also enjoyed charity bake sales, quiz nights and celebrations for historic events like the Coronation. We also have a weekly running club in our Norwich office and in 2023 members completed and raised charitable funds in the Run Norwich 10k.
• We continue to support industry wellness charity The Drinks Trust and mental health charity Growing Well.
• Our Benevolent Wine Range raises funds for our chosen charity partners - The Leeway Domestic Abuse Charity and Bright Start.
Want to learn more?
Our latest 2023 Sustainability Report can be found here.
Our 2022 Sustainability Report is available here.
For full details regarding our PAS 2060 carbon neutral certification and offsets, please see our Qualifying Explanatory Statement 2022 here.
View our 2023 Qualifying Explanatory Statement here.
