Monday 3 October 2022
The Carbon Column – More sustainable ‘Porn Stars’
Last week I was a guest speaker at the Heineken SmartDispense Energy Well Spent Debate Series. This debate series followed on from an event Heineken hosted earlier in the year which focused on helping the hospitality industry reduce carbon and costs.
There was a particularly interesting story from Revolution Bars. A simple action to save a considerable amount of carbon, which I wanted to share with you.
Revolution Bars
Revolution bars, or the more common name, Revs, is a PLC with 69 bars across the UK. One of the most popular drinks is the Porn Star Martini, selling 1.3 million annually.
If you’ve ever had one, you will know they come with half a passion fruit as garnish. You may also be aware that passion fruits don’t grow in the UK. They grow in tropical climes and the majority are produced in South America.
This fruit has baggage, as it comes great deal of air miles.
These air miles are something Revs decided to tackle. They scrapped the passion fruit garnish and replaced it with rice paper. The majority of people remove the passion fruit from the drink anyway, as it gets in a way.
Removing the garnish saved Revs from transporting 35 tonnes of passion fruit from South America to the UK. This is the equivalent of 108 tonnes CO2e. The same as 587,000 kWh worth of natural gas which is just under 50 average household’s annual consumption.
As you can imagine, this change also brought financial savings which Revs is using to invest in other carbon reduction plans and technologies to help the group achieve net zero by 2030.
In midst of all the chaos, it is enjoyable to hear success stories of organisations carbon emissions reductions.
I am always keen to hear more stories like this, so if you have any, please feel free to email me or message me on LinkedIn.
