Making our business more sustainable

As the largest wholesaler in the industry, we have a responsibility to take a leadership role and set the standard for environmental sustainability. This means finding new ways to operate more efficiently, and engaging suppliers, customers, employees and our communities in our efforts.

Environmental sustainability and reducing Southern Glazer’s carbon footprint

 

Environmental sustainability and reducing Southern Glazer’s carbon footprint remains a top, strategic priority for our Company. As an example, Green Teams, comprised of valued employees from many departments, are in place throughout the Company to focus on and implement environmental initiatives. After years of operating with environmental sustainability in mind, in 2022, we took a bold step forward, establishing a cross functional team of leaders to initiate a full baseline and assessment of our environmental sustainability efforts, including benchmarking best practices inside the organization and across the industry.

 

This extensive baseline exercise highlighted the need to consider fleet efficiency and electrification solutions, as well as energy efficiency tactics and renewables. Enhancing environmental data automation and quality was also determined to be a priority. And, because 90 percent of the impact of the products we sell is outside our walls—the importance of collaboration across our value chain to drive large-scale impact is critical.

 

This baseline work was the foundation for developing our new 2030 corporate sustainability vision statement:

 

“Harness the passion of our people, trading partners and communities to take measurable environmental action and contribute to a sustainable, hospitable planet for future generations.”

 

With this vision in place, the Company then set out to create a strategy, with a focus on setting measurable goals and actionable plans that address our material environmental impact across four strategic pillars:

  1. Focusing on engine efficiency, projected supply chain strategy optimization, and a shift to electric vehicles.
  2. Optimizing energy efficiency while pursuing onsite and offsite renewable energy solutions.
  3. Focusing on low-flow water fixtures to reduce Southern Glazer’s water consumption per employee.
  4. Optimizing our most material waste impacts based on where we are today.

While this strategic work outlined above was underway, in April 2022, we simultaneously launched a Company-wide environmental sustainability idea competition. The competition was part of Southern Glazer’s Idea Distillery program, which crowdsources employees’ ideas for innovative ways to solve business challenges. The objective of this Idea Distillery challenge was to identify implementable ideas to help our Company contribute to a more sustainable future.

 

After reviewing 100 ideas and identifying seven finalists, the following winning ideas were selected to address the Company’s environmental footprint by reducing water, waste and energy usage.

 

First Place Idea

 

Minimizing plastic waste recycling through a nation-wide, e-purposing program

 

Second Place Idea

 

Employee EV incentives / credits to expand EV usage and curb Southern Glazer’s overall fleet impact

 

Third Place Ideas (tie)

  • Reduce water usage with waterless urinals in Company facilities
  • Reduce paper waste with enterprise-wide paperless solution

 

Now, with these and other initiatives planned to address our four climate impact pillars, we look to make progress on our goals and take a leadership role in enhancing sustainability across the wine and spirits ecosystem. We will also continue to engage our ecosystem of suppliers, customers and community partners throughout our journey to deliver on our sustainability vision.