Sustainability is the buzzword in almost every industry and venture at the moment, and sustainability means something different to everyone. For some it’s about using fewer natural resources. For others it’s about not damaging the natural world around them, and trying to restore or enhance it. For others it’s recycling, eating less meat, utilising a natural energy, or just turning the heating down a little. There’s no one correct definition, but everyone doing their little bit surely must be a good thing.
It’s no different for the whisky industry in Scotland. Whilst not an inherently environmentally damaging industry, whisky production can, and does, have its impact and many distilleries and companies are keenly aware of their need to be more sustainable, especially in a society more conscious than ever about the frailty of the world around us. Nc’Nean on the Morvern peninsula may be at the forefront with their ethos on embedding sustainability into all aspects of their business, but lots of others are doing their part, whether it’s protecting or enhancing the land around them, cutting down on or reinventing packaging or trying to find alternative sources to peat. All of these are hugely worthwhile and will have their impact. But one group are getting involved in something a bit different.
I’m a marine biologist by first trade, and a whisky lover and storyteller beyond that. So the project currently running in the Dornoch Firth, north of Inverness, between Heriot Watt University, the Glenmorangie company and the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) could not be more up my street. The project is called the Dornoch Environmental Enhancement Project (or DEEP) and was set up to restore native oysters (Ostrea edulis) to the Dornoch Firth, which neighbours the Glenmorangie distillery in Tain. These shellfish were once prevalent in the Firth but were heavily overfished and the population collapsed during the 19th century. It never recovered and with the only native oyster population of any decent size in Scotland located in Loch Ryan (about as far as you could get from Tain), it was unlikely to ever recover naturally. This is not a problem unique to the Dornoch Firth, native oyster populations around the UK have crashed due to a mix of overfishing, disease and introduction of non-native (or exotic) species of oysters and there are few natural populations left around our coasts.
In an attempt to address this, in 2014, the project partners came together to suss out the viability of reintroducing the native oyster to the Firth, and then once that was ticked off, they set out to actually do it. Glenmorangie played their part in 2 major ways; they provided some of the seed funding to give the project life, and they also built an anaerobic digestion plant which helps to purify the wastewater that leaves the distillery and heads into the Firth. A reduction is any waste heading into water courses is good news but especially for environments containing oysters which are filter feeders and as such, they will extract just about everything from the water around them. With the new plant significantly reducing the waste going into the Firth from Glenmorangie, the oysters are afforded the opportunity to thrive in cleaner water. With their ability to filter the seawater around them, they can safely account for the removal of some of the remaining waste, further purifying the sea and enhancing the environment for other life around them which may be more sensitive to sub-optimal conditions.
The project’s goal is to restore around 4 million oysters into Dornoch, a number that will cover 40 hectares (that’s 56 football pitches for those of us unaccustomed to hectare measurements) of the seabed. Oysters play a significant positive role in natural ecosystems through a number of processes so their reintroduction should only have a helpful impact. There’s still a long way to go in this exciting project (the total number of introduced oysters is only around 60,000 at the moment) but it goes to show how distilleries and other whisky stakeholders can have a positive impact on the world around them, and not just by producing a world class drink.
The collaboration between Glenmorangie, MCS and Heriot Watt is not the only aquatic restoration programme underway. In March of this year, Chivas Brothers, part of the Pernod Ricard group, announced plans to team up with a multitude of river trusts in the Spey region with the aim of protecting and restoring the local freshwater river systems. While the quality of the water might be the main concern for Chivas Brothers, the work should help to improve the overall health of the rivers and the animals and plants that rely upon them. This project, titled “River Within” is part of the wider work by Chivas to improve their sustainability credentials and benefit the natural environments they live and work in.
There will be some pushback and doubt on these initiatives, there always is when large companies and corporations go into an area like sustainability. It can be labelled “greenwashing” or similar, and it can be seen as a cover for the less-than-positive behaviours that might be going on. Sometimes it’s not far from the mark, but in the cases we’ve looked at, there’s no reason to believe that Glenmorangie and Chivas aren’t serious, and won’t follow through on their commitments and plans. The Scotch whisky industry might still have progress to make in some of its sustainability goals and ambitions, but so does just about every major industry in Scotland, and worldwide. However, seeing evidence of steps forward is a good thing for everyone to celebrate, as we should too with the excellent work of Nc’Nean, Glengoyne and others. The industry should also be looking at how best practices can be shared to reduce the impacts on the environment, and I think it won’t be long before we see Scottish whisky producers leading the world on the sustainability front too.
Sean black - Freelance writer 