Reaching 93% Waste Reduction

Fetzer Vineyards: A California vineyard combining across-the-board environmental sustainability with high profits.

Imagine a football field covered in garbage. It's a foot deep, so when you walk around in it - slogging through office paper, food pulp, old pens - it reaches up past your ankles. Now imagine someone has cleaned that field.

The waste is the same depth, but now it only reaches from the first to the seventh yard line, and 93 percent of the field is pristine and green again. That's a major cleanup. And that's what Fetzer Vineyards in Hopland, Calif., has accomplished with its own waste since 1991. It has done it during a time when sales more than doubled.

Not being one to rest on its laurels, the Fetzer Winery aims to go further - to zero waste by the year 2009. "We are already recognized as a zero waste company by the state of California," said Patrick Healy, environmental coordinator at Fetzer. What they do with all that non-waste is instructive. They recycle everything from cardboard to antifreeze; compost organic waste and turn it into fertilizer; and work to keep materials out of the waste stream - by restoring oak barrels rather than discarding them, for example.

There's almost no aspect of the winery that escapes this kind of detailed environmental scrutiny. Take the administration building, for example. This 10,000-square-foot facility, completed in 1996, is one of the world's first large-scale examples of rammed-earth (underground) construction. It was built almost entirely with recycled wood.

Carpets are natural fiber. Lights are on motion sensors so they go off as you leave the room. Heat comes from waste heat off chillers used in wine-making. And instead of air conditioning, the building uses night-air cooling. "Computerized and motorized windows open at night to admit cool air," Healy explained. Even landscaping is environmentally conscious. It's a "zeroscape," he said, because the drought-resistant plants take little water.

And then, of course, there's the photovoltaic array on the roof, which got up and running in June. "It's the largest photovoltaic display in northern California not owned by a utility company," Healy said. It supplies three-quarters of the building's energy needs. All other power used by the winery is from renewable sources, thanks to a unique utility contract signed in May. The solar array really won't pay thanks to a unique utility contract signed in May. The solar array really won't pay for itself, but it was built with the help of grants.

About 20 to 30 percent of grapes used now are organic, but Fetzer plans to reach 100 percent by 2010. Toward that end, it formed "Club Bonterra" to help share ideas on sustainable farming under its outside farmers, who provide over 90 percent of grapes.

Renewable power is slightly more expensive, but Fetzer is offsetting that by pursuing efficiencies in usage. And recycling is decidedly less expensive than landfilling. It all does make economic sense. "But it's not like we're using it as a competitive edge," Dolan said. It simply fits in with how the company does business. Fetzer's vision statement is to enhance the quality of life.

What's remarkable is that Fetzer takes this holistic approach as a publicly held company. This $160 million firm is owned by the $2 billion Brown-Forman Corp. based in Louisville, Ky. "They've been great about it," Dolan said.

Fetzer runs its own show, as long as the profit is there. And as Dolan says, Fetzer is "very profitable." Over the last six years, profits and revenues have grown at a 15 percent annual compounded rate.

It's a model worth showcasing for a new century: a thoughtful and deep commitment to the environment, combined with financial excellence. As Dolan said, "it helps other people see it can be done."

Source: The Natural Step International.

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