Sustainability within our business
When you purchase our wines, you can relax knowing that your enjoyment comes at no price to the planet.
Lawson’s Dry Hills is currently the only New Zealand wine producer to hold both ISO14001 (Environmental Management) and ISO14064 (carbonzero) accreditations.
We are a carbonzero certified winery having achieved the rigorous demands of the internationally recognised ISO14064 and received certification from Toitū Envirocare.
A Toitū carbonzero certified organisation has measured, managed, and mitigated the operational emissions of its organisation, including business travel, electricity, vehicles and offices, in accordance with ISO 14064 1 and the GHG Protocol.
In addition to our Toitū carbonzero certification, we are fully certified under the ISO14001 Environmental System (ISO14001:2015). You can see our ISO14001 certification here.
The internationally recognised ISO Environmental Management Systems Standard 14001 standardises a process to effectively control and continuously improve an organisation’s environmental performance. This enables efficient identification and control of the environmental impact of business activities, services and products, as well as provide a systematised ability to benchmark and achieve environmental objectives.
We are also certified under Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand!
This programme, initiated in 1997, is widely recognised as world-leading and was one of the first to be established in the international wine industry.
SWNZ provides a ‘best practice’ model of environmental management in the vineyard and winery. It is a proactive management system that enables winegrowers to produce high quality wine using environmentally responsible and economically viable methods.
For more details about Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand standards click here.
Watch New Zealand Winegrowers “Sustainability in Wine Country” video on YouTube here
All this means we take sustainability very seriously. As a small, hands on team, we are very aware of everything that we do, even more so as we don’t outsource anything! Our autonomy gives us control, accountability and responsibility and that’s just how we like it.
We have one of the lowest uses of power and water per litre of wine produced. We also think carefully about our packaging choices. Our lightweight bottles are made in New Zealand with a minimum of 60% recycled content and the paper for our wine labels comes from certified, sustainably managed forests. Our cartons are made from 100% recycled fibre and our pallet shrink-wrap is 100% biodegradable.
We recently completed the installation of 200 solar panels, providing the optimum 30% of our power needs. We are also capturing and recycling rainwater from the winery roof and restoring the native wetlands at our Waihopai vineyard.
The Lawson’s Dry Hills Environmental Policy
In addition to our commitment to sustainability we are also certified under Appellation Marlborough Wine
Lawson’s Dry Hills were among the first to adopt the Appellation Marlborough Wine certification as soon as it became available (from the 2018 vintage). We feel it is a strong tool that helps us to promote our Sauvignon Blanc as truly Marlborough.
Appellation Marlborough Wine is an assurance mark for the region’s highly renown Sauvignon Blanc. It is a timely evolution, established to protect the integrity of Marlborough wine in the marketplace. It is a promise of origin, integrity, authenticity and sustainability that the wine-buying public of the world can see and trust. To qualify for the certification, wines must adhere to strict criteria including the grapes being 100% from Marlborough, grown by Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand-certified vineyards from managed yields and be bottled in New Zealand.
