Weekender: Distillery creates England’s first carbon-negative gin

Yorkshire-based Cooper King Distillery has become the first distillery in England to produce carbon-negative gins as part of its ongoing commitment to fighting climate change.

The award-winning eco-distillery’s Dry and Herb Gins are now classed as carbon-negative meaning that for every bottle of spirit created, Cooper King removes more carbon from the atmosphere than is emitted.

The distillery has achieved this by reducing the carbon footprint of both of these gins as far as possible by looking at the procurement of its ingredients and packaging, production methods and distribution. The remaining carbon footprint has then been offset with verified carbon credits to reach carbon-neutral.

However not content with being carbon neutral the firm then offsets a further 1kg of CO₂ per bottle. In addition to carbon offsetting, each bottle of gin plants one square metre of native UK woodland in charitable partnership with the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust.

Chris Jaume, co-founder, Cooper King Distillery said: “Producing flavour-driven, sustainable drinks has always been at the core of what we do, because we believe drinking good spirits needn’t cost the Earth. After a year’s worth of hard work, and despite a pandemic, we’re delighted that we’ve been able to achieve carbon-negative status for our two core products.

“Reaching this milestone is a significant step in our plan to become a carbon-negative distillery. We value people, planet and prosperity, and through sharing our findings in our publicly available Carbon Report we hope to inspire others to make a positive difference.”

As part of Cooper King’s commitment to long term sustainability, it has recently planted 30 juniper bushes on site. The hope is that once mature in 8-10 years these could produce enough juniper for around 15,000 bottles of gin a year.