Environmental Commitment
Casella Wines aims to be a key player in the development of a Carbon Footprint tool for the Australian wine Industry. Read further to find out what we are doing to help our precious environment.
Casella Wines aims to be a key player in the development of a Carbon Footprint tool for the Australian wine Industry. Read on to find out what we are doing to help our precious environment. Turning water into wine? As of November 2007, 100% of waste-water from the Casella winery has been recycled at our state-of-the-art Mt Bingar Reclamation Facility. We are proud to have the largest waste-water treatment scheme of its type in Australia. The facility has the capacity to recycle 400 million litres of water per annum - the equivalent of 160 Olympic swimming pools. The operation is chemical free and environmentally friendly - in very basic terms, we are relying on ‘bugs' to help us eat up all the pollutants in the water! About 69% of this water will be used to irrigate farms close to the winery. The remaining water will be used within the winery for general purposes. Casella also plans to use some of the water by growing crops such as Lucerne, which will increase the area's biodiversity. The availability of this secure recycled water source eases the winery's reliance on channel water from the Murrumbidgee River. We are winners... We were ‘Highly Commended' in the Business Awards Category for the Mt Bingar Facility in the 2008 NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change Awards. But it doesn't stop with water! In order to identify how much energy we use, we recently conducted an energy audit. Several energy-savings opportunities were identified, with the estimated CO2 savings coming to 9,087 tons. The opportunities were from various areas, including refrigeration, compressed air, steam systems and lighting. Work has already commenced on developing plans to determine exactly how we are going to achieve this reduction, so watch this space.