Alliance Wine, One Year Later: Building Momentum In Anti-Waste Work

In 2022, our Projects team worked with Alliance Wine to create a formal Anti-Waste Policy for their wine events. Alliance Wine launched this Policy at a portfolio event in February 2023, and it was fantastic to see the policy creating change in real time. 

Following the launch, we spoke to Marta Juega Rivera, Winemaker and Sustainability Manager, about the positive effects of this Anti-Waste Policy. For example,

• Both employees and attendees developed a deeper awareness of the waste that can be generated at a wine portfolio event.  
• The number of wine bottles used was reduced by 32.3%, while using slow pours reduced the volume of wine used by 50%.
• Metrics like these are now used as internal waste indicators, allowing for future planning and further improvement.  
• By introducing collection options that allow corks to be reused, the team saw significant reductions when it came to dry mixed recycling. “For an event with 250 people we threw away two 40L bags,” said Marta, “compared to a previous norm of at least double that.” 
• The same event created three 40L bags of commercial waste compared to a previous 4-5, and had no food left over. 
  
  

The policy was deliberately designed to be reviewed on an annual basis, ideal for maintaining momentum and for cultivating an ethos of continuous improvement. To ensure that the most relevant information and practical advice is captured from those who are enforcing the policy on the front lines, every employee is involved in these reviews. 

Read on to learn how we’ve helped Alliance Wine to review and refine their Anti-Waste Policy for 2024 in order to move towards a Circularity Policy.

Updating language, influencing action

One big change was in how the team at Alliance Wine speaks about waste in the first place. As our Head of Projects and Consultancy Martina Dell explains in this article, “our language and our values are interconnected – how we talk can have a real impact on our actions and attitudes.” 

Simply by using the word ‘waste’ in the first place, we contribute to an overall mentality in which we devalue these resources. At Alliance Wine, official policy is now focused on the concept of circularity rather than waste; even a simple shift like this forces us to think about the full life cycle of a product, putting due focus on the design phase and upstream as well as (the much more frequently discussed) handling of waste at end-of-life.

Bringing this language to life through action, the team at Alliance Wine is now designing events in ways that deliberately reduce waste at source and embraces circularity. This includes better planning and tracking for event catering and replacing physical materials with digital ones. 

More metrics, better data

While setting clear targets and engaging the team and wine producers is a natural first step in rolling out a new policy, prioritising efficient collection of quality data is essential in assessing progress against these targets and in driving continual progress.

For each standard outlined in the Alliance Wine Anti-Waste Policy, we worked with the team to create clear and measurable metrics and KPIs, along with a tracking tool for storing and assessing data. This provides more information overall and has also improved the quality of the data they collect.

As an example, the Alliance Wine team now tracks how much wine is opened vs. consumed, since it’s common practice at wine tasting events for too many bottles to be opened. Asking producers to track how many bottles they’re opening improves accountability and means a higher level of change can be achieved.

Better briefings

As Marta told us last year, “The implementation of any new policy requires preparation and means putting unfamiliar practices in place[...]. We know now that we need to invest time in the transformative education of employees; this is something I would like to improve for coming events.” 

One way Alliance Wine has gone about this (with a little input from us!) is by creating an updated briefing video. Wine events are fast-paced, and it can be hard to explain new concepts or communicate required actions on on-the-day briefings. Creating and sending a video out ahead of each event has proved to be a very effective way to ensure that both the Alliance Wine team and the wine producers involved have sufficient time to digest new concepts, actions and ways to track data.

Outlining key next steps

Now that tracking systems are place and clear benchmarks have been established, Alliance Wine can define targets for waste reduction and other improvements and start tracking these year-on-year.

One significant waste stream identified at 2024 events was paper marketing materials, for example the portfolio wine lists that outline all of the wines and producers at each event. Because these are often specific to single events, it’s easy for waste to be created. Alliance Wine is currently testing the ease with which digital materials can replace these physical ones, bearing in mind that physical booklets have been standard until now and are expected by many attendees.

You can download the Alliance Wine Event Circularity Policy here.

To learn more about our work on sustainability projects, click here. If you’re interested in chatting about how The Sustainable Restaurant Association can help your business, get in touch at hello@thesra.org!