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IMPLEMENTING AN ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM – THE GLENTURRET
May, 2024
UNDERSTANDING & MANAGING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT THROUGH DATA
PILLARS: Environment & Governance
MATERIAL DRIVERS: Water Management, Energy Management & Biodiversity
THE CHALLENGE
Understanding your current environmental impact as accurately as possible is key to developing an effective sustainability strategy and taking appropriate action. Adapting management systems to integrate environmental data can be daunting, and for a premium drinks business, many of its most material areas are environmental and many of the dependencies can be found in the production process, including but not limited to water and energy use, biodiversity and responsible land management. The Glenturret needed to understand and track their environmental data and required guidance on integrating this with their current business operations and daily management systems. This required a review of all current information processes.
CONSIDERATIONS
Collating complex environmental data can be time consuming and resource intensive. Any data collection and management system implemented must be appropriate and efficient for the size and type of business.
APPROACH & ACTIONS
Positive Luxury’s action plan for improvements included implementation of a new Environmental Management System (EMS) to ensure standardised and efficient management moving forward. This was activated through:
An EMS workshop teaching the team what a materiality assessment is – and how to prioritise the issues most material to their business and impact through both internal and external stakeholder engagement
Provided an EMS template, risk map and consultancy with guidance on how to tailor their material drivers appropriate for their business operations whilst aligning with ISO 14001 standards (a key consideration for the premium drinks industry)
Helped centralise their data and set actionable steps to measure impact in order to then set reduction targets aligned with the business’s Net Zero ambitions. Working with the team, a full review of current processes was conducted, and a resulting process map was created
RESULT
Implementing an EMS has allowed leadership to centralise data aligned to material drivers and ISO 14001 standards, prioritising issues most material to their business such as waste, water, energy, carbon and biodiversity. An internal Green Team was established, responsible for measuring impact and setting reduction targets and projects – including tracking natural habitat and wildlife to feeds into a biodiversity impact assessment. Initial actions have resulted in their overall environmental assessment score increase of +145%.
