Whin Hill
Cider
Cider
Environment
We are very aware of the environmental impact of our business and are taking a number of steps to improve the environment on our orchard and minimise the adverse effects of the production and sales sides. Our impact can be viewed under 3 headings - the Orchard, Carbon Emissions and Waste.
The Orchard
Our aim, on the orchard is to provide a good wildlife habitat as well as good crops of fruit. Although we do spray the trees we do the minimum to keep the trees healthy. The orchard grass is also allowed to grow up to the trees and is not itself fertilised. We have a number of nest boxes in the trees and shelter belt used by tits, finches and a tawny owl. We have planted around 2000 native trees and shrubs. Some of the more interesting flowers are cowslips, salad burnett and bee orchids. Hares and skylarks breed in the grass. There are large populations of bumble and solitary bees as well as the hives of honey bees kept on the orchard. We have a pond with frogs, toads, newts and dragonflies.
Cowslips and Perry
Pears in Flower
Pears in Flower
Bee Orchids in
the Grass
the Grass
Carbon Emissions
Emissions of carbon dioxide are clearly implicated in global warming and need to be rapidly reduced to avoid very serious environmental impacts. The table below shows our calculated emissions in tonnes of CO2 in 2006/7 from various aspects of our business. They include both direct (e.g. fuel we use) and indirect (e.g. fuel used to make our glass bottles) emissions.
Item
Emissions Tonnes
Our Orchard
1.0
Processing - pressing, pasteurisation etc
4.3
Transport - orchard to ciderworks, deliveries
2.2
Glass bottles
8.1
Other bought in supplies, boxes, bags, labels
3.0
Total
18.6
Average per bottle in Kg (40,000 bottles)
0.47
Measures in hand to reduce this include:-
Lighter weight bottles (saves 1.3 T)
Bottle re-use ( 1.3 T)
Heat recovery from pasteurisers (0.75 T)
Electricity from Ecotricity
Current savings 3.35 T (18%)
Plenty still to do, major item being greater bottle re-use
Lighter weight bottles (saves 1.3 T)
Bottle re-
Electricity from Ecotricity
Current savings 3.35 T (18%)
Plenty still to do, major item being greater bottle re-
Waste
We operate with relatively small volumes of waste. The main items are cardboard packaging which is either re-used or sent for recycling. Plastic film (pallet wrap for bottles), fertiliser sacks and pesticide containers are sent for recycling. The spent pomace left after pressing and the lees and sediment from fermentation are applied to the orchard as a soil conditioner.