Sustainability
Punt Road Wines is a certified member of Sustainable Winegrowing Australia, a nationally recognised certification program for vineyards and wineries who want to be engaged environmental stewards. Punt Road is one of the few wineries in the Yarra Valley that has achieved certification. This certification was obtained after a third-party audit assessed our winery's environmental performance and set goals for improvement over a three-year period. These goals include reducing energy, water, and resource consumption.
Punt Road Wines is committed to reducing its environmental footprint and positively impacting the communities in which we operate.
In 2020 we installed a 99kwH Solar Array on the roof of the winery, offsetting our power needs by around 400kw per day. To put this in context, an average household of 3 people uses around 18kw a day.
We capture wastewater that is used for washing winery equipment and barrels into storage and treatment ponds. That water is then reused in vineyard irrigation.
Once our grapes are fermented and pressed, the remaining skins (marc) are composted and reapplied as fertiliser on the vineyards.
Since 2023, we have implemented smarter use of our refrigeration equipment, with over 20% reductions in energy use already measured. At the same we retrofitted our original winery plumbing and drainage and have reduced winery water use by around 20%.
Reduce and Reuse
Did you know that making and transporting packaging accounts for up to 70% of all CO2 emissions related to wine businesses! This makes action on packaging essential if we are to minimise our environmental footprint.
Punt Road is a signatory to the Australian Packaging Covenant - a national scheme under which businesses and government share responsibility for managing the environmental impacts of packaging. Under this covenant, Punt Road is required to create and report on an annual action plan. As part of our plan in 2024, we will transition half of our wine range to light weight glass and eliminated cardboard dividers from their wine cartons. We estimate this will reduce the overall CO2 emissions from these products by up to 15%.
