Cooper King unveils first carbon-negative English gins

Yorkshire-based Cooper King Distillery has produced what are thought to be England’s first carbon-negative gins.

The distillery’s Dry Gin and Herb Gin have been certified carbon negative, meaning the production of the two products removes more carbon from the atmosphere than what is released.

Cooper King reduced the carbon footprint of the two gins as far as possible, before offsetting the rest with verified carbon credits from Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard programme. Furthermore, 1kg of carbon dioxide equivalent is offset per bottle.

Chris Jaume, co-founder of Cooper King Distillery, said: “Producing flavour-driven, sustainable drinks has always been at the core of what we do because we believe drinking good spirits needn’t cost the earth. After a year’s worth of hard work, and despite a pandemic, we’re delighted that we’ve been able to achieve carbon-negative status for our two core products.

“Reaching this milestone is a significant step in our plan to become a carbon-negative distillery. We value people, planet and prosperity, and through sharing our findings in our publicly available carbon report we hope to inspire others to make a positive difference.”

In addition, Cooper King has partnered with the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust charity to plant one square metre of native UK woodland for every bottle of gin produced.

Cooper King has also planted 30 juniper bushes at its distillery, which could produce enough juniper for around 15,000 bottles of gin annually once mature.

The firm became the first distillery in Europe to join environmental initiative 1% for the Planet.

In February last year, Scottish field-to-bottle distiller Arbikie used peas to produce carbon-neutral gin Nàdar.