Love Your
Mother Earth
Farming Sustainably
Over the years, we’ve developed and continue to refine cultivation techniques that optimize the quality of the local wheat grown for our vodka, while minimizing the environmental impacts of that wheat cultivation.
Swedes have tried their hand at beet and potato vodka in the past, but centuries of experience have shown that winter wheat, with its high starch to protein ratio, makes the best vodka.
From an environmental perspective, Swedish winter wheat also offers a host of benefits. Skåne’s cold winters and long warm summers provide the ideal growing conditions for winter wheat. As a result, the yields here are more than twice the global average, so we use proportionately less farmland to grow the same amount of wheat for our vodka. This also explains why we don’t farm organically. Yields of organic wheat are much lower than for conventional wheat. Growing the same amount of organic wheat would take almost twice the amount of land.
Even with these high yields, wheat cultivation still has a big impact on our carbon footprint. Much of this is to do with the fertilizers used in farming. Nitrous oxide is emitted during their production and if they aren’t handled responsibly, fertilizers can also end up in our rivers and lakes, washed off the land by rainwater. This increases the levels of minerals in the water in a process called eutrophication, which in turn encourages harmful algae growth.
Winter wheat, with its high starch to protein ratio, requires less fertilizers than spring wheat. Winter wheat also contributes less to eutrophication by nutrient leakage. Sown in the autumn, it provides ground cover during the rainy winter months and also establishes a huge root system. Both help to hold onto the nutrients rather than having them washed away. Skåne’s cold winters also act as a natural inhibitor, meaning that winter wheat needs less plant protection.
As well as requiring less fertilizer and plant protection than spring wheat, winter wheat also gets almost all the water it requires from rain, so there is very little need for irrigation, conserving the region’s precious water reserves.
Absolut cultivation concept
As a vodka producer, we knew winter wheat would deliver the smooth character and environmental benefits we wanted. First, we would have to convince the local farmers, who were still farming the land as though they were growing protein-rich wheat for feed or bread, not the high starch content we need for vodka. As a result, they were using too much fertilizer and plant protection.
We therefore began a dialogue with the farmers and demonstrated what we meant using field trials. These proved that growing winter wheat for vodka production required significantly less nutrients and plant protection than bread wheat.
We also demonstrated the benefits of growing capture crops in rotation with the winter wheat to hold onto the soil’s nutrients and of introducing buffer zones, which use some of the nutrients to grow grasses and flowers, rather than them finding their way into our lakes and rivers.
Working in close cooperation with plant breeders, we also developed special varieties of ‘starch wheat’ and now specify those that require less nutrients, herbicides and pesticides than most, further reducing the environmental impact.
Reflecting our constant drive to improve, we’re continually developing the Absolut cultivation concept. We’ve recently started using the wheat husks left over from our wheat rinsing process, for example, to make biochar. Using biochar in the cultivation of wheat will both improve the soil and capture carbon in the ground.
Conserving and Re-using Energy
If we’re able to encourage and convince local farmers to change the way they work the land and adopt more sustainable farming practices, imagine the improvements we can make within our own production facilities.
From an environmental perspective, our chief challenges here relate to the way energy is generated and consumed, and our emissions to the air, soil and water.
We believe that the most sustainable energy is the energy that isn’t used. So, over the years, we’ve put a lot of effort into streamlining and optimizing our processes.
In 2004, we installed new energy-efficient equipment at our distillery which significantly reduced energy consumption. At the heart of the distillery is a huge compressor which recycles the energy from the distillation process in the form of steam and recompresses it for re-use. For every 1 kWh of new energy applied, the equivalent of 5 kWh of steam is generated.
Additionally, our main source of energy is electricity from renewable, hydropower sources – unusual in an industry where fossil fuels are by far the most common source of energy production.
Together, these improvements have enabled us to reduce the amount of energy used in the production process by 45% since 2004. Today, we use 60% less energy to distill a liter of alcohol than the average distillery*. We use 0.66 kWh of energy to produce one liter of vodka. Or, to put it another way, it now takes less energy to make a double shot of Absolut Vodka than to brew a cup of tea.
With such a climate smart, energy-efficient distillery, it’s no surprise that we continue to produce every drop of Absolut Vodka in Skåne. Producing it in other countries would only add to our CO2 emissions.
*Calculated from the distilleries which participated in the BIER 2018 Benchmarking Executive Summary
Reducing Emissions From Production
With reduced energy use and our choice of hydroelectric power as our main energy source, we produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than ever before and not just from our distillery.
In 2012, we converted the heating system at our main bottling facility in Åhus from oil heating to district heating – a wood-chip heating system developed to serve the local community. All our facilities’ heating systems are now fossil fuel free.
By phasing out these fossil fuels, switching to renewable electricity and using district heating, we’ve cut carbon emissions per liter of vodka by 80% since 2004. In total, more than 85% of the energy used in our facilities comes from renewable sources. In a good year, it’s as much as 98%. As a result, our CO2 emissions from the production of one liter of alcohol are 98% lower than the average distillery*.
We do still use some fossil fuels in our distillation process – including Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) to restart distillation after maintenance and at our back-up facility – but these amount to less than 15% of our total energy use.
Since 2013, we’ve offset these limited emissions by investing in the Plan Vivo certified forestry project “Scolel’té” or “The Tree that Grows” in Chiapas, Mexico. The project supports small-scale farmers to cultivate their land on a long-term basis through planting trees along with their crops. This so-called agro-forestry helps to reforest deforested areas and while the trees grow, they absorb CO2, removing it from the atmosphere.
We also support Skymining – an innovative climate-related project that involves planting fast-growing grass. The grass binds CO2 and restores marginal land to arable land again. The grass itself, meanwhile, is converted into a renewable fuel.
*Calculated from the distilleries which participated in the BIER 2018 Benchmarking Executive Summary
Turning By-products Into Resources
The production of alcohol from wheat gives rise to by-products. At Absolut, we choose to see these as resources rather than waste. As well as making good business sense, this is also good for the environment.
Our main by-product is the mash left over from the distillation of the fermented wheat, known as stillage. For every liter of vodka produced, we’re left with four liters of stillage, which is high in protein and makes a good animal feed.
Absolut’s stillage feeds around a quarter of a million pigs and cows locally, on the days that the distillery is operational and plays an important role in the sustainable breeding of livestock in our local community.
Thanks to our stillage, animals that contribute to an open landscape and biodiversity by grazing the land throughout the summer, can eat locally produced feed in wintertime. The alternative would be to import soy fodder which has a large environmental impact.
Completing the circle, the manure from these pigs and cows is used as a natural fertilizer in the cultivation of next year’s wheat.
Unlike most distilleries, we generally supply our stillage wet. As a result, no energy is wasted in drying it out. This also saves the farmers from having to rehydrate the stillage from local water reserves before feeding it to their animals. Half the water used to produce our vodka ends up being fed to local animals this way.
At Absolut, we try to ensure that all our by-products are put to good use. Another good example of this is our partnership with a company that recovers most of the carbon dioxide produced during the fermentation process. They then sell the CO2 on to other mostly local industries to be used in a variety of ways, including the production of algae products containing Omega-3 and in greenhouses to accelerate the growth of tomatoes and cucumbers.
Making Every Drop Count
Water is one of our top priorities, both from a production and sustainability perspective. So, even though Absolut Vodka is produced in an area with its own huge underground aquifer, a lot of work has been done to reduce our water use.
We share the same precious water supply with the rest of our local community – towns and villages needing municipal drinking water, farmers requiring irrigation water and other nearby industries. Together, we have a joint responsibility to ensure we don’t use more than is naturally replenished.
For us, this has led to the ‘water hunt’ – a project that’s constantly looking for ways to save and re-use water, whether that’s by supplying stillage wet, re-using our water for cleaning production equipment or supplying collected rainwater for irrigation.
Currently, around 10% of the water we use goes into our vodka, and almost half ends up in our stillage and is fed to animals. The remaining 40% is used for production equipment cleaning, water treatment and other purposes. Some of this goes to a nearby pond, which is used by local farmers for crop irrigation. In this way, we are joining with the farmers in saving precious groundwater.
The rest is sent to a municipal wastewater treatment plant since it’s too rich in nutrients to be discharged directly into the environment.
Our efforts have paid off. During 2019/2020, we used 5.6 liters of water to produce every liter of Absolut Vodka. Since 2004, we have reduced our water consumption by around 25% and the hunt continues.
Respecting Our Waste
Sweden is one of the top recycling countries in the world, recycling over 95% of glass packaging**. Absolut shares this commitment to recycling materials.
At a local level, we send almost none of the waste materials from our facilities to landfill. Instead, we recycle or re-use everything we can at recycling facilities in Sweden. The rest is incinerated and contributes to community heating.
Our main packaging, Absolut’s iconic bottle, is manufactured at our nearest glassworks, also in southern Sweden, keeping transportation to a minimum.
Glass is a good material because it’s inert, durable and can be recycled over and over again. Unfortunately, its production process is very energy-demanding and the resulting CO2 emissions make up around half our carbon footprint.
To combat this, our bottles are now made from more than 50% recycled glass. This significantly reduces the energy required in production as well as CO2-emissions, not only by decreasing the need for resource extraction, but also in the actual glassworks. Today, we use approximately one third of all the clear glass recycled in Sweden.
Through active partnership with our glass supplier, we’re doing everything we can to further improve our bottle’s environmental credentials. When we redesigned the bottle in 2015, for example, we reduced the glass weight by 10%. This cut CO2 emissions per bottle by the same percentage.
We’ve also set up an eco-design framework to minimize our bottle’s environmental impact throughout its lifecycle. This framework encourages us to choose colors and production techniques, for example, that minimize energy use in the glass design process.
For the Absolut bottle to be an environmentally good option, it needs to be recycled by the end consumer in our markets. Today, recycling rates vary enormously around the world. In the US, which is one of our biggest markets, only around 37%** of glass packaging is recycled.
Even though this is mainly the responsibility of governments to supply the infrastructure and consumers to use it, it’s also a challenge Absolut needs to address if we don’t want our bottles to end up in the oceans or landfill. In 2016, we joined the Glass Coalition, an initiative to address this issue in the US market. We’re also part of a glass recycling project in Brazil, called Glass is Good.
We also promote re-use and recycling in our markets. In 2019, we ran an Absolut Comeback campaign, featuring a limited-edition bottle designed to look like pieces of broken glass. Our tribute to those who recycle glass and helped to create the bottle, Absolut Comeback was a global call to arms to join our #RecyclingHero movement.
Our bottle may be our main packaging but it’s not the only component. We also use cardboard, all of which is FSC-certified, and plastic packaging. In total, around one third of the raw materials used are recycled.
Additionally, we’ve eliminated the use of single-use plastic in our Point of Sale.
**Source: FEVE; EPA; GPI; 2018
Driving Down Emissions From Transportation
Our commitment to the environment doesn’t end with production. The sustainability efforts directed towards the transportation of our vodka are just as important.
Absolut is working hard to reduce CO2 emissions from transportation, both locally within southern Sweden, and globally to our 120 markets around the world.
In 2009, we started monitoring our local transportation and soon realized that the vast majority of these emissions originated from the transportation of animal feed.
Addressing this area of activity was going to be key, so in 2014 we built a biodiesel filling station at our distillery and gradually started to convert trucks carrying stillage to run on hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO). This is a form of renewable diesel made from renewable and sustainably sourced vegetable fats and oils. Today, at least 70% of Absolut’s local transport of wheat, glass, spirits, stillage, cardboard and caps runs on renewable fuel.
Back in 1989, we made an important decision regarding our worldwide distribution. Volumes were growing and we needed to invest in a new warehouse. Despite it being the more expensive option, we decided to invest in one in the local harbor, provided that the harbor in turn invested in converting its old bulk facilities into a modern container facility. This meant that we would no longer have to rely on land transport and small feeder vessels to other bigger harbors in Sweden, which would have been less favorable from an environmental perspective.
Today, 70% of all Absolut Vodka bottles are shipped from the port of Åhus directly to other ports around the world. With sea transport responsible for less than 10% of the CO2 emissions caused by road haulage, this makes a significant difference to one of our main environmental impacts.
Energy efficient though this may be, there is still plenty of room for improvement when it comes to air emissions from sea transport. To show our commitment to cleaner water, we joined the Clean Shipping Index in 2007, which puts pressure on ship owners to report on and reduce their emissions and chemical use, as well as making it easier for us as a customer to choose shipping companies that share our environmental objectives.
Although 70% of our shipping is done by sea, inland shipping remains a major factor. In the United States, where almost all shipping is done by truck, the Pernod Ricard Group, of which we’re a part, is involved in the Smart Way Transportation Partnership to reduce the climate impact of shipping. We’re also part of Q3 Forum, a Swedish initiative to support the sustainable procurement of road transportation.
And because everyone in the company shares the same belief that we should only develop sustainably, we’re going to go on making environmental improvements and trying to do everything even better in the future.
*Calculated from the distilleries which participated in the BIER 2018 Benchmarking Executive Summary