Green News

We have always enjoyed outdoor activities and have naturally made the link between understanding and caring for our environment and enjoying it. From trampling across Dartmoor as teenagers training for Ten Tors to cycling through the Americas in a mid-life crisis, we love to understand the landscapes we travel through and how best to care for them.

This is one of the reasons why we donate 1% from every bottle of our gin to a local Butterfly Conservation project. The project is based across three local moorlands (Dartmoor, Exmoor and Bodmin Moor) and focuses on the following species; Marsh Fritillary, Pearl Bordered Fritillary, Small Pearl Bordered Fritillary, Heath Fritillary and the Narrow-bordered Bee Hawk-moth. If you have not come across the Hawk-moth before then it’s well worth looking up. They’re beautiful.

From time to time I head out on to the moor to do some monitoring and surveying for the project. Very close to where we live there’s a good habitat for Marsh Fritillaries and I was happy to report several sightings last summer.

As well as our interest in conservation we have taken a good look at our business and the ways in which we can improve our environmental impact:

• We only use compostable cups at all of our events and tastings, and always take our rubbish away to sort and recycle
• Many of the pubs we supply return the empty bottles to us for re-use
• We encourage the stockists we supply to return our boxes to us for re-use
• The electricity supply in our distillery and powered through Good Energy ( a UK company that provides 100% renewable power that’s UK generated) www.goodenergy.co.uk
• The packaging for Papillon Gin does not include any plastic - we use a paper watch-strap to seal the bottles, the corks are natural and the caps are wooden, the labels and bags are paper or jute, and the gift tubes are made with cardboard

We are currently looking into rainwater collection from our distillery building to use to cool the condenser of the still and then use the hot water to heat the building. What other things could we do? Do you have any suggestions? We would love to hear from you.