Unless you’re a brand driven by sustainability, then I imagine that having to think about writing a Sustainability Report, is akin to having to do your homework when you were a kid. You know you should probably do it, but suddenly everything else becomes more interesting and you put it off to the last possible moment, or don’t do it at all. (I was definitely guilty of this at school!).

But today a sustainability report is becoming an increasingly important document for drinks businesses as distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and buyers are demanding sustainability data more and more often. I know this because we’re current working with all of those on providing them with sustainability data on drinks brands.

I have been exactly where you are. With Avallen Spirits, I wrote our annual ‘Bee More Report’ which was our way of documenting our sustainability performance across the year and translate it into rich storytelling.

So let me save you some of time and share what I’ve learned along the way. Here is how to start, in plain English, without spending money you do not need to spend yet.

First, understand what "reporting" actually means

Sustainability reporting sounds like a single, intimidating document. It is not. It is just the practice of measuring the environmental and social impact of your business and being able to show your working.

There are three broad things distributors/wholesalers/retailers/buyers might ask you to report on:

Your carbon footprint, aka the greenhouse gas emissions associated with making and selling your product.
Your wider environmental impact, which includes water, waste, packaging, and increasingly biodiversity and land use. Packaging is most common here but as we’re inextricably linked to agriculture, water and biodiversity impact are important to measure and track
And your social and governance impact, which covers how you treat people, your suppliers, and your community.

Let’s start with ‘carbon emissions’, because that is what buyers, investors, and regulators ask about first.

Breaking it down

Upon first glance, this can seem complicated, like trying to understand quantum computing. But, for us drinks producers, it’s really pretty simple.

The first thing to remember is that it’s not just carbon dioxide. Your ‘carbon footprint’ includes all greenhouse gases such as methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N20), and more that then wraps them all up into a metric called CO2e or carbon dioxide equivalent.

All of your emissions are broken down into 3 scopes. This is a way of categorising where the emissions come from.

Scope 1 is the emissions you create directly on site. If you run a gas powered still, a gas boiler, or a company owned vehicle, the fuel you burn is Scope 1.

Scope 2 is the emissions from the energy you buy, aka electricity. So your monthly electricity bill, plus charging company owned electric vehicles.

Scope 3 is literally everything else in your value chain. Your glass, your grain, your apples, your packaging, your distribution, the journey your bottle takes to a shelf, fuel purchased for employee vehicles used on company business (cars are a bit more complicated) and what happens to it at the end of its life. For almost every drinks brand, Scope 3 is the overwhelming majority of your footprint, often around 90% or more.

You might think it’s OK to just report your Scope 1 & 2 emissions, but without including Scope 3, you’re missing out on the vast majority of your footprint.

Where to actually begin

The most obvious question is: where do I start?

Start with what you already know. Dig out your energy bills, invoices, supplier lists, production volumes, product recipes, and packaging specifications. You have these and there’s a lot of useful data in there to start calculating your impact. With just your electricity and gas utility bills and invoices of any fuel or refrigerants purchased you can calculate your Scope 1 & 2 emissions.

Then pick one of your products, ideally the one that matters most commercially. Build out the ingredients, water, and packaging and work out its impact from cradle to grave, i.e. the entire lifecycle of the product from raw materials to the end of its life.

Map the journey of that product. Where do the raw materials come from, how is it made, how is it packaged, how does it travel, and what happens to the bottle after someone enjoys it. Each stage is a place where emissions and impact occur. This map becomes your checklist for data collection.

For many drinks brands, glass is the single biggest contributor to the carbon footprint. It’s a heavy, energy intensive material and is why many brands are focusing on weight reduction of their bottles. Ask your supplier about the weight and if they’ve run an LCA on the product. The good producers will be able to provide that information.

The hardest part is starting

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. No one is expecting you to have a perfect LCA first time out, and given that impact data is constantly being updated and improved, a perfect report today will be out of date in 3 years time as data and reporting standards improve. A report you create today built on reasonable estimates and clearly stated assumptions is far more useful than no report at all. The methodology lets you improve the numbers over time.

Measuring your impact and marketing it are two different activities. With new anti-greenwashing legislation in place, get your measurements right first, privately, then you have the auditable evidence to back up any claims you make about the impact of your product. Making a claim you cannot back up is now a legal and financial risk, not just a reputational one, thanks to new rules like the Green Claims Directive.

What is the value in a sustainability report

Having your sustainability reports in order unlocks a number of important commercial, financial, strategic, and marketing benefits for your business.

It can answer a wholesalers/distributors/buyer's sustainability questionnaire in a simple email reply instead of a panicked fortnight trying to gather all the data and pull it together. It can show an investor real numbers instead of intentions, and investors are increasingly demanding sustainability data. It can point to specific, evidenced changes year on year, which is what regulators, retailers, and increasingly citizens actually trust. And it can provide you with important data points to build strategic decisions around.

Why I built alkatera

The frustration of trying to do this at Avallen; the spreadsheets, the half-answers from suppliers, the seemingly never ending waiting on replies to my emails, and the sense that I didn’t have the full picture, is the reason I built alkatera.

alkatera is a sustainability operating system made specifically for drinks brands by a drinks brand founder. I built it so you can own this process internally rather than outsourcing it and waiting, hoping to get the information you want. alkatera goes way beyond just carbon. We guide you through your footprint calculations across our 4 core pillars of: carbon, water, waste, and biodiversity. We’ve built every calculation on recognised methodology such as ISO, GHG, CSRD, FLAG and many other acronyms you don’t need to remember, and we turn your data into something you can use commercially with a buyer or an investor, strategically to reduce risk and costs, and as an auditable evidence engine for your marketing claims.

If you would find it useful, I am happy to share the simple checklist we use at alkatera to help drinks brands take their first footprint from nothing to a working number. Just get in touch and I will send it over.