The environmental impact our business has, has always been important to us, because, well how on earth could it not be? The planet deserves our respect or one day, sooner rather than later, it's going to quite rightly kick us out!

Balancing the need to protect, reduce, reuse and frankly put a load more effort and money into things which have traditionally been cheap and easy in the food and drink industry, against running a business that sustains it's staff wage bill and grows enough to stay relevant in a crowded market place isn't easy. I'm not about to pretend we're perfect because we're not.

We are however, extremely conscious of the actions we take and we always, always look for better options every time we make a decision. I've complied a list of things we're doing which tick the sustainability boxes, as well those we will be doing within the next twelve months. I know these are baby steps in the grand scheme of saving the world, but it's a start. Hopefully the next time I write, the list will be longer, attitudes will be better and the future that little bit brighter.

Now: Our trade and online customer orders are shipped in boxes made from 70% recycled material and are fully recyclable. The sample cups we use at events are fully biodegradable.

We deliberately don't use faux corks which are made from plastic, there is a small amount of plastic inside all screw caps which creates the seal, we are looking for alternatives to this.

The tamper proof seal on our barbecue sauce bottle is fully biodegradable. We recycle wherever possible at our warehouse including food waste. We try to use suppliers who are nearby to reduce the miles our "stuff" travels. Our post card size leaflets are made of recycled paper.

When we create gift packs and promotional items we consider the longevity of them. If it's something which might end up in the bin after a couple of uses, and isn't recyclable, we simply don't buy into it. When we created our Barti Barbecue Sauce gift sets we selected aprons made from recycled material and organic cotton tea towels.

We are imminently launching a t-shirt made from cloth produced in the UK, the cloth is partly made from seaweed fibre. The collaboration with Inland Sea is the first of its kind in the UK and means less raw material is transported around the world. Seaweed is more sustainable than cotton.

In the near future: In 2023 we will be moving to using partially recycled glass for our 70cl bottles (this is currently uncommon in the spirits indusrty, 100% recycled glass is not available). At the same time as changing our bottle we're looking at the different options in the world of labels, focusing on either biodegradable or recycled material labels for all products. We are reviewing our courier options and are looking at moving to a company which is using electric vehicles in South Wales, unfortunately this isn't available everywhere just yet.

The biggie is our blue carbon initiative which means we are working on a brand new scheme which means seaweed will be grown on ropes in the sea with the sole purpose of absorbing carbon. Seaweed can absorb more carbon than trees, it grows faster and uses zero land space. You can read all about how it's going here: Barti and the Big Blue