Sustainability

At Left Handed Giant we recognise we are in the midst of a climate crisis.
We are committed to doing everything we can to be a voice for positive action, and to lead by example.
We do not claim to have all the answers, but we are committed to being open and transparent about our successes and failures, and the decisions behind them.

We are working with Our Carbon to conduct a yearly audit of our carbon footprint. You can access this report here.

As a founder, employee and community owned company we are not pressured by large, corporate investors. We are free to make decisions based upon our morals, and be led by what we think is right.

We have built a business on the principle of reducing the distance between tank and tap. More than 60% of our product is sold through our own taps, and over 75% of our product is sold within Bristol. Only around 5% of our product is sent abroad. The most environmentally friendly place for our beer to be consumed is in our own bars. The second most environmentally friendly way to access our product is in bars, from keg in the city of Bristol. The less our beer has to travel the better, and the larger the packaging size the better. Our most environmentally friendly packaging type is our 1000L serving tanks in our Brewpub. Behind that is our 50L kegs and last on the list is our 440ml cans. We are committed to increasing the volume of our beer that we package into tank and keg.

Our cans should always be a low volume, high demand part of our business, and wherever possible travel direct to small, independent venues who share our social and environmental ethos.

 

All that being said, as a manufacturing business with our own physical premises, we cannot eliminate our carbon footprint entirely. There are many things we are doing, and many more we can do. But we can only reduce so far. Our current yearly emissions are 473 CO2e, which is just over 1 tonne of carbon for every £10,000 of revenue we generate. We are committed to reducing these emissions, and in turn reducing the level of offsetting we are required to take in order to remain carbon neutral.

Our Carbon Footprint

  • This is our direct emissions created on site in our brewery and our bar premises. Link to external website Check out. (bristolggc).
  • This is our indirect emissions from purchased energy. All the energy used within our business is 100% renewable.
  • This comes in 2 forms, upstream and downstream; these are all the emissions that are created indirectly on our behalf in the value chain (our suppliers, transport to and from our premises etc).

Reduction Of Our Emisions As Our Priority

While we can and will use offsetting as a tool within our sustainability programme, we will always place the reduction of our emmisions as our priority. Since undertaking our first Carbon Footprint Audit we have been working to implement reductions throughout our business. The actions that we have taken to date are detailed below.

Brewery Reductions

  • We are entirely powered by renewable energy. All energy purchased from our supplier is certified as coming from renewable sources such as wind, solar and hydro.
  • Spent grain is collected for use within a local farm.
  • We have solar panels on the roof of our main brewery in St Philips. We are currently fighting with Bristol City Council to allow us to install solar panels on the roof of our Finzels Reach Brewpub. We are committed to installing solar panels wherever possible throughout our premises.
  • We have switched out all lighting across our premises to ensure they are low energy use LED. In low usage areas in our Brewpub premises we have installed PIR lighting which turns off when the location is empty.
  • We are a Zero to Landfill business, working with Bristol Waste to ensure that all our waste is either recycled or diverted to be incinerated.
  • We have changed our can labels to corn starch, a fully biodegradable material.  
  • All of our cardboard packaging boxes are made from FSC Certified 100% recycled materials.
  • We pay a surcharge to ensure that every key keg we use is fully recycled at end of life.
  • All of our clothing merch is sourced from eco friendly supplier Stanley Stella.
  • We have a purchasing strategy across our company which considers our environmental, societal and economic impact before every purchase. Our policy can be viewed here.
  • We measure and have set targets for reduction of our energy usage in all of our premises.
  • We measure and have set targets for reduction of our generated waste in all of our premises.
  • Our premises managers are incentivised to consider their environmental impacts and continually innovate with their teams to reduce that impact.

Bar Reductions

  • Purchase our gin and vodka in bulk containers to reduce transport and waste.
  • For our wine in bag in box to reduce transport and waste.
  • Purchase our Gin and Tonic in keg format from a local supplier to reduce transport and waste.
  • Our crisp supplier is 100% plastic free and compostable.
  • We have replaced our non-compostable blue roll with a compostable subsitute.

Office Reductions

  • We minimise our paper use wherever possible and only print when absolutely necessary.
  • Only unbleached or chlorine free paper products are purchased.
  • Office supplies such as notebooks and pens should be recycled and environmentally friendly.
  • Printer cartridges should use soy based, or low VOC ink.
  • All printer cartridges are returned to the provider for recycling through programs such as Xerox Green Alliance.

Our Offsetting

We have tried to approach our carbon offsetting in as balanced a way as possible. Due to the nature of offsetting we have used a balance of hyper local (Bristol), local (UK) and International projects.

It is important to note that UK PIUs (Pending Issuance Units) are ex-ante credits - delivering future carbon savings from these nature based projects - and therefore we try to specify clearly within our communications. With ex-ante credits, we are unable to make a hard offset or carbon neutral claim. The market is set up whereby we can only 'offset / neutralise' our footprint through verified ex-post credits (ie. emissions reductions that have already taken place).

We have used a balance of International projects to entirely offset our 470 tonne footprint, alongside our Bristol and UK projects (from which there is no offsetting for Carbon Neutral certification) to give us a sense of impact into our locality. It is important to us that we are entirely transparent about our offsetting and that when we do invest into offsetting projects we do so with pride and a real sense that it will have a meaningful impact into the climate crisis.

We work with The Forest of Avon Trust for our Bristol based projects. We have sponsored the planting of 2 x 2.5m trees on our Bristol streets, within walking distance of our St Philips Brewery. We tend our trees and water them on a weekly basis. You can view the location of our trees here.

Our team now all have 1 fully paid day per year to volunteer with The Forest Of Avon Trust to plant trees within our local area. In partnership with Avon Needs Trees, they have worked together to secure over 100 acres of land near the village of Pensford. Over the next three years, volunteers will help to plant and care for 40,000 trees supplied by the Woodland Trust. Great Avon Wood will consist of three linked woodland sites and they are now inviting people across the region to help plant this new woodland.

You can find out more here

We work with our partners at Forest Carbon to ensure our UK Carbon Credits are as high quality and impactful as possible.

We support the following UK Projects:
  • Glenorchy, West Coast Scotland (Native Broadleaf)
  • Tom's Wood, North Yorkshire (Native Broadleaf)

You can view these projects and their impact here.

We work with both Forest Carbon and Carbon Footprint to give us a diverse portfolio of International Projects.

We support the following International Projects via Forest Carbon:
  • Forestal el Arriero, Uruguay - Reforestation / Afforestation - Sustainable timber production
  • Cordillera Azul National Park, Peru - Forest protection and biodiversity area
  • Cochabamba, Bolivia - Small community reforestation and protection programme

 

We support REDD ( Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) in the following areas with Carbon Footprint. The image dislayed oposite is a photo from our Congo REDD project.

  • Congo, Brazil and Guatamala.