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Recurrent, record-setting temperatures make one thing clear: The climate crisis is upon us. With the phenomenon no longer in the future tense, the dialogue is starting to shift. Prevention can no longer be our sole focus. We must also begin to adapt. Agrivoltaics presents a promising way to do so, while cutting greenhouse gas emissions through renewable energy production.

Agrivoltaics is dual-use solar

So, what are agrivoltaics? “It's a single parcel of land being used for both solar and either agricultural or horticultural productivity,” said Kelly Buchanan, policy and strategy manager at Lightstar Renewables, a community solar developer that is expanding into agrivoltaics.

Solar panels can be installed above crops on a farm, for example. They can also be mounted over greenhouses or above pastures to provide shade for livestock. Meanwhile, the energy produced can be made available to the surrounding community through local utility subscriptions. Or, if farmers and landowners install their own panels, they can use the electricity generated to mitigate their energy costs.

Designed to optimize sunlight and shield crops

Although it may look like the solar panels block out the sun and limit photosynthesis, this is not the case. “The solar panels tilt," Buchanan explained. Each panel sits on a single axis tracker that follows the sun throughout the day, optimizing solar power generation and providing the plants underneath with plenty of light. The solar panels are also bifacial, meaning they can generate energy from sunlight on both sides.

Not only do agrivoltaics double up on land use by allowing solar energy production on the same soil that grows food, but the practice also offers an important adaptation option for our warming planet. Solar panels that are mounted above crops have a protective effect, keeping plants cooler and leading to less evaporation and, therefore, less demand for irrigation, Buchanan explained. Water that does evaporate helps cool down the solar panels to optimize energy production.

“[With] the drought out West and the increasing pressure on what we use our water for, it’s huge," Buchanan said. “There's another benefit here of the solar panels creating a bit of a microclimate which can shelter from heavy rain events [and] protect plants from hail."

Increased yields

With all of these benefits, it’s no surprise that many crops actually perform better under the cover of solar panels than they do when they are completely exposed to the elements.

“In Arizona, for example, we saw that tomatoes fruited more, and peppers produced up to three times more underneath these projects," Buchanan said. "We also saw, out of a study coming from Massachusetts, that peppers, broccoli, kale and Swiss chard all saw the same or greater yield, despite a record dry and hot summer in the year the study was conducted. There's a huge opportunity here."

Benefits for farmers and landowners

In addition to the potential for higher yields and lower water needs, farmers and landowners can benefit financially from agrivoltaic contracts. “The landowner gets a lease payment for the use of the land monthly,” Buchanan said. Farmers also receive stipends to reimburse them for their time spent cutting weeds and vegetation away from the panels. 

“From the start of the project to the end, our priority is to work with farmers and farm managers to understand how agrivoltaics can be implemented and the system that works best for them,” she said. “And we're really taking into consideration soil health, especially in the construction period, and making sure we retain that soil.”

Drawbacks and challenges

While the research is encouraging, not all crops have been tested for compatibility with agrivoltaics. For all we know, some may fare worse under the system, though this does not appear to be the case so far.

Still, since the concept of agrivoltaics is in its infancy, it will likely be a while before these systems are implemented at scale. “It takes a lot of time to bring this new idea to communities, to answer their questions, to make sure they're getting the information they need, and then to allow the stakeholder process to unfold and allow communities to coalesce from a regulatory standpoint,” Buchanan said. Communities may need to vote on new zoning ordinances, for example, to allow agrivoltaics projects to go forward. 

It’s too early to say whether agrivoltaics can solve the competition for land between crop farms and solar farms. But the data suggests there are big benefits to marrying the two together — especially as the climate crisis worsens and the need to adapt, while also lowering dependence on fossil fuels, becomes an absolute necessity. 

Images courtesy of Lightstar Renewables

The demand for skilled trades like carpentry, plumbing and electrical is booming across the United States. The construction sector alone will need to draw nearly 550,000 new entrants into the field to meet the demand for labor this year, according to Associated Builders and Contractors, an industry trade group. 

Not only do these jobs pay well, but people also say they enjoy doing them: Construction jobs rank second highest in levels of self-reported happiness and second lowest in levels of self-reported stress, according to 2022 polling from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Still, employers are struggling to fill vacant roles, and it's set to get harder in the coming years as baby boomers and Gen Xers near retirement. 

"If you look at the average age of somebody in the skilled trades, a majority of these people will be retiring within the next 10 years," said Jordan Sanderson, an associate vice president at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, which serves more than 8,500 students a year across nine locations in the southern part of the state. 

The Lowe's Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the home improvement retailer Lowe's, is looking to change that by attracting and training up more young people. The $50 million Lowe's Foundation Gable Grants program, launched in March, will provide two-year grants for workforce training programs with the goal of channeling 50,000 people into skilled building trades over the next five years.

The Foundation announced its first round of grants, totaling $8 million, last week — with recipients including community and technical colleges like Mississippi Gulf Coast, as well as MiraCosta College in California, Madisonville Community College in Kentucky, and Columbus Technical College in Georgia. 

“These colleges are deeply embedded in the communities they serve and are so well-positioned to meet the changing needs of the skilled trades industry,” said Betsy Conway, director of the Lowe’s Foundation. “As our first wave of many Gable Grants recipients, we’re extremely confident in their innovative training programs and ability to continue building the sustainable and inclusive workforce that our country needs.”

So, what's causing the labor shortage in skilled trades anyway?

"Back 30 some odd years ago, when I was in high school, the pressure was on for everybody to get out and go get you a college education, get you an office job," said Obey Parker, a skilled craftsman and building trades instructor at Mississippi Gulf Coast. "The computer revolution was taking off, and everybody was doing that. And vocational programs suffered as a result. They started getting put out to pasture." 

As the cultural zeitgeist shifted, young people put less stock behind working with their hands and looked toward four-year college degrees for the promise of higher pay. The result? Student debt exploded more than sevenfold since the 1990s, but research shows college graduates still find it challenging to secure jobs in their chosen field. 

The booming demand in skilled trades — where salaries often exceed median U.S. worker pay by 30 percent or more — offers a promising new avenue for young people in search of steady work. But getting them interested requires a shift in mindset. 

"We as a society haven't done a good job over the last 10 or 20 years of promoting skilled trades," said Sanderson of Mississippi Gulf Coast. "You have these two factors of a somewhat negative perception of the skilled trades, coupled with ever-rising demand, and it creates a pretty profound worker shortage." 

With an eye toward local job markets, community and technical colleges look to get more people involved 

Interest in this space is slowly rising: 19 percent of high-school students said they are considering career and technical education in the skilled trades this year, compared to 15 percent in 2020, according to surveys from the nonprofit ECMC Group. 

Mississippi Gulf Coast plans to use its Gable Grant to fund internships and apprenticeships within its skilled trades programs, so students can earn a living wage while being trained in the field, as well as scholarships for lower-income students.

Where four-year college graduates are often slow to land their first job, the majority of Mississippi Gulf Coast's skilled trades programs — which range from building trades and construction engineering to 3D modeling and design — have job placement rates above 90 percent, Sanderson said. Graduates have a near 100 percent pass rate on the exams required for industry credentials. 

Given the high success rate of these programs, the college is looking to extend them to another population: those looking to rebuild their lives after leaving prison. Powered by Gable Grant funding, this year Mississippi Gulf Coast will launch a new skilled trades program at George County Regional Correctional Facility, located about 40 miles west of its main campus in a rural stretch near the Mississippi-Alabama border. 

Parker will head up training at George County across skilled trades like carpentry, electrical, masonry and plumbing. "It costs in the neighborhood of a million dollars to start a new career tech program because you have to buy so much equipment," Sanderson said. "While we've wanted to do something at George County for a while, we didn't have the money to do it. The Gable Grant will help us to stand up the program." 

Though mass incarceration has created a situation where around 1 in 3 U.S. adults now has a criminal record that would appear on a routine background screening, people often have trouble securing a job after they're released from jail or prison. Embracing this population can help fields like construction address labor shortages, and employers in Mississippi seem ready to do just that. 

"Market research went into it to see what exactly people can get jobs in when they're released," Sanderson said. "We don't want to teach somebody how to do something and they have to move away to get a job, or they can't get the job because they have a record." 

Mississippi allows inmates to transfer facilities in order to participate in workforce training programs. Those interested in entering the skilled trades can request a transfer to George County, while another nearby correctional facility offers a similar program for aspiring commercial truck drivers. Though the grant period is two years, the equipment installed at George County will allow Mississippi Gulf Coast to continue the program for many years to come. 

Meanwhile, MiraCosta College, which serves more than 10,000 students at two campuses in San Diego County, California, will leverage its Gable Grant funding to start two new skilled trades programs in the in-demand fields of heating, ventilation and cooling (HVAC), as well as electrical.

"Both programs would be low cost to increase the participation of low-income individuals," said Linda Kurokawa, director of community education and workforce development at MiraCosta College. "During the two years of the grant, we expect to be able to provide training for a minimum of 168 students. Our close relationships with industry partners allow us to plan internship possibilities for students once they graduate from our programs." 

It doesn't stop there 

Funding for community and technical colleges is a promising way to build a strong and steady pipeline of people entering skilled trades, but it's not enough on its own.

"It needs to start in the grade schools. It needs to start early," said Parker, who often encounters students who lack the foundational math skills to start their training in building trades. He identifies stronger students to act as tutors in order to navigate this challenge, but a greater emphasis on foundational skills in early education will allow teachers to do more once students enter college. Mississippi recently invested in high-school career coaches with this aim in mind. 

Beyond the requisite skills, though, educators, business leaders and everyday people need to do more to shift the perception around skilled trades and position them as viable, respected careers among the next generation. 

"It is important to also make sure people understand that careers in skilled trades are stable and well-paying opportunities," said Kurokawa of MiraCosta College. "Marketing all of these aspects is crucial in attracting more individuals to these great career pathways. It also helps to accelerate the training so that individuals can learn quickly and find themselves with paid on-the-job training as soon as possible."

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act will reach the one-year mark on August 16, with a stunning impact on manufacturing jobs in tow. However, a worker shortage still looms overhead. To grow the factory workforce, manufacturers must appeal to an increasingly diverse population, which challenges them to push back against legislative attacks on diversity and inclusion.

The manufacturing sector's struggles gave us MAGA, but reality doesn't match the rhetoric

In just one year, the Inflation Reduction Act has accomplished the seemingly impossible job of growing the U.S. manufacturing sector.

Factory jobs in the U.S. hit a 40-year downward spiral after peaking in 1979. Two million manufacturing jobs disappeared between 1980 and 2000. Another 5.5 million jobs were lost from 2000 to 2017.

Though manufacturing output actually continued to grow during this period, the shrinking number of people at work on the factory floor set the stage for former U.S. President Donald Trump's “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan. His message, amplified by right-wing media and punditry, conflated the loss of factory jobs with an existential threat to white, working-class men and their communities. 

The race-based MAGA message also helped candidate Trump gain financial support from conservative donors. Despite the rhetoric, though, the actual “working class” — defined by households without a four-year college degree — is quickly diversifying.

In an April report, the Center for American Progress described how the MAGA focus on white factory workers glosses over actual working-class demographics.

“Throughout the 2016 and 2020 election cycles, the term became, in some circles, nearly synonymous with white workers in manufacturing or skilled trades. In fact, today’s working class is more diverse than ever,” the report reads. "Black, Hispanic, and other workers of color make up 45 percent of the working class." Women make up almost half.

Diversity in the working class is driven by the rise of employment in service industries, especially retail, health care, food service and accommodation, and building services, Center for American Progress and other analysts report. 

In a 2020 report, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics underscored the bigger picture of working-class diversity: “Manufacturing’s falling share of employment coincided with job growth in service-providing industries, including professional and business services, education and health services, and leisure and hospitality."

The Inflation Reduction Act and a new day for factory jobs

When manufacturing jobs peaked in 1979, they accounted for 22 percent of total non-farm employment in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By 2019, the share of manufacturing jobs fell to just to just 9 percent.

It remains to be seen if the Inflation Reduction Act can bring the sector's share of the job market closer to its former glory. However, the number of manufacturing jobs is clearly growing — and many of them are in clean energy.

By May 2023, the strategic communications firm Climate Power counted more than 142,000 clean energy jobs created by the Inflation Reduction Act, spread among 191 projects.

The sustainable business organization E2 is also tracking clean energy jobs. With an exclusive focus on private-sector investments, E2 reported on 16 major clean energy projects that were announced in July alone. E2 received data on 14 of those projects, and the total came to nearly 3,600 jobs and $2.2 billion in new investments.

“Since the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) took effect in August 2022, businesses have announced at least 205 major new clean energy projects across 38 states," E2 wrote in an announcement last week. "Of the projects with publicly available estimates, $86 billion in new private capital would be invested and nearly 70,000 jobs created." The list is available on its website. 

The factory doors are open, but where are the workers?

Announcing a new factory is one thing. Filling the factory floor is quite another. In 2021, the National Association of Manufacturers commissioned a workforce study that outlined a growing shortfall in skilled labor. “The manufacturing skills gap in the U.S. could result in 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030,” the trade group warned.

Competition for workers from non-factory clean energy stakeholders is another factor working against manufacturers. Energy policies during the Barack Obama administration resulted in skyrocketing growth in the areas of solar panel installation and wind farm construction, among other sectors. Some of these out-of-factory industries already have experience in recruiting clean energy workers including veterans, women and historically underserved communities.

What’s a clean energy manufacturer to do?

To attract skilled workers, clean energy manufacturers can start by implementing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. When done correctly, DEI programming has a proven track record in helping companies to recruit women in non-traditional fields, bring more people of color into teams and leadership roles, and make the workplace more supportive and welcoming for those in the LGBTQ+ community. 

However, the in-house approach to DEI is no longer sufficient. In the run-up to the 2020 election, former President Trump deployed his rhetorical firepower against diversity training, adding fuel to an ongoing wave of anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. The violent tenor of the legislation is reflected in violence on social media and anti-LGBTQ+ violence on the streets, as recently illustrated by actions against AB InBev’s Bud Light brand and the retailer Target.

Against this backdrop, manufacturers need to look beyond workplace DEI programs, and the 2024 elections are a good place to start. To the extent that clean energy candidates are synonymous with human rights candidates — and they are, for the most part — clean energy manufactures can help ensure that an informed, active electorate turns out to support the rights of women, people of color and LGBTQ+ people.

As organizations like Time to Vote, HeadCount and BallotReady look to encourage voter participation, they rely on corporate partnerships to help spread the word. Companies like manufacturers also hold the influence to steer powerful trade organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers to support human rights and climate action candidates.

The U.S. manufacturing sector has finally turned a 40-year-old corner. To make sure it doesn’t drop off a cliff, manufacturers need to prioritize diversity and inclusion beyond the factory gates. 

As the summer months wane, Uzbekistan’s steppes and valleys approach a critical season for the country’s economy, history and culture: the fall cotton harvest. The central Asian nation once accounted for over two-thirds of the Soviet Union’s cotton production. It's still a top global producer of the cash crop, nicknamed oq oltin — which means "white gold" in Uzbek. 

Over the course of a century, the country’s cotton sector has undergone dramatic surges, lows and redirections. After Uzbekistan’s independence and under its first president Islam Kerimov’s dictatorship until 2016, the state continued to control cotton production. Nearly 2 million citizens, including children and adults from primarily rural areas, were required to leave school and work to harvest cotton each year for meager or no pay. In 2009, civil activists launched a petition to call on corporations and government entities to boycott Uzbek cotton due to its use of government-mandated labor.

After decades of international, corporate and citizen pressure to reform its labor laws, Uzbekistan is making real improvements. Among the latest developments: In June, key stakeholders and government officials signed on to a sustainability roadmap in partnership with the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), a nonprofit that works to improve cotton farming practices. The initiative has worked in 26 countries so far, and more than 20 percent of the global cotton supply now meets the Better Cotton standards for environmentally, socially and economically sustainable production.      

Over a decade of change in Uzbekistan's cotton industry 

BCI launched the Better Cotton Program in Uzbekistan in 2022, a year that marked a major inflection point in the complicated history of  Uzbek cotton production. 

In 2010, a year after the boycott petition, a human rights watchdog called the Cotton Campaign released a corporate pledge for brands moving away from sourcing Uzbek cotton. Hundreds of global companies, including Adidas, Disney and Macy's, signed it. 

The Uzbek Forum for Human Rights — then called the Uzbek-German Forum — also began monitoring and publishing annual reports of cotton farming practices in 2010. Its 2022 report “found no evidence of systematic, government-imposed forced labor for the second consecutive year." The International Labor Organization came to the same conclusion in a report based on 11,000 interviews with farmers.

The Cotton Campaign's corporate pledge subsequently ended in March 2022, reopening the country’s cotton exports to much of the Western market. 

Uzbekistan and the Better Cotton Initiative look to scale more sustainable farming practices

Created with key stakeholders, BCI’s roadmap in Uzbekistan is one of the first large-scale plans to transition the country’s farming practices to a more socially and environmentally sustainable model. It highlights four objectives: developing effective management systems, building stakeholder awareness of environmentally sustainable best practices, creating a three-year strategy for management and delivery, and implementing effective, safe labor systems that manage employer-worker relationships. 

Better Cotton’s updated principles and criteria will take effect before the 2024-2025 harvest season, and Uzbekistan adopted it as a target national standard, Katerina Gorbunova, Better Cotton’s Uzbekistan manager, told TriplePundit in an email. The criteria’s six principles include management, natural resources, crop protection, fiber quality, decent work and sustainable livelihoods. Two cross-cutting priorities — gender equality and climate change mitigation and adaptation — shape requirements within these areas. 

“From a social standpoint, [the new principles and criteria] will place stronger onus on driving impact and promoting wellbeing in farming communities, supported by more robust requirements surrounding decent work and gender equality,” Gorbunova said. “Through ongoing capacity strengthening and check-ins with farm management and trade unions, in partnership with international and local partners, we will focus on strengthening social dialogue and industrial relations aimed to support workers' representation at the cluster level.”

Accounting for historical context 

Clusters, or vertically integrated cotton companies, are a key example of how Uzbekistan's recently privatized cotton industry has changed, and continues to change, on a fundamental structural level from its decades-old Soviet model. The previous model employed state farms — where farmers were effectively state employees — and the smaller-scale, but much more common, collective farms called kolkhoz, Russell Zanca, a professor of anthropology at Northeastern Illinois University, told 3p. The kolkhoz structure persisted even after Uzbekistan’s independence, he said, with farms aiming for district harvest targets instead of quotas within the Soviet five-year plans. 

But the kolkhoz were not monolithic. “Collective farms could be successful or very poor based on their leadership, objective conditions in terms of area, soil quality… and the degree to which the state paid attention to that particular area,” Zanca said. 

Better Cotton’s principles and criteria account for this kind of variation by identifying three categories of farms — smallholders, medium farms and large farms — based on factors like area, structural dependence on permanent labor, and mechanization. All of BCI’s criteria apply to each of these producer categories, but its measurement of their continuous improvement of sustainable practices takes into account that different farms "start at very different baselines." At this point, the initiative's network in Uzbekistan works with large farms.

Cotton farming’s environmental impact 

The roadmap is also poised to shift cotton farming’s ecological and environmental impact in Uzbekistan. Some of the primary harmful farming conditions include soil degradation, water supply, pollutants and pesticides, Zanca said. 

The Aral Sea, now the Aralkum desert, was the primary 20th-century water source for Uzbekistan’s largely arid land. Salinization, or salty water, affects 63.5 percent of the country’s irrigated land, according to the International Water Management Institute. Outdated irrigation systems are the main cause, and farmers often add more water to the affected land to leach the salt, further straining the water supply. The Aral seabed now poses public health concerns. Its dust carries to surrounding regions and contains not only salt but also fertilizer and pesticide residue, according to the Convention on Biodiversity. 

The new criteria’s environmental impact aims include minimizing damage from crop protection, water stewardship, protecting soil health and supporting biodiversity. “A holistic approach to regenerative agriculture supports resilience and builds and nourishes ecosystems,” Gorbunova said. “Many Uzbekistan cotton producers are already incorporating a number of regenerative agriculture practices focused on soil health, biodiversity, the reduction of synthetic inputs, and improved water efficiency.” 

Better Cotton’s Roadmap in Uzbekistan has the potential to be a major driving force in shaping more sustainable farming practices — economically, environmentally and socially. When asked about addressing the country’s main agricultural roadblocks, Zanca’s answer felt globally applicable. 

“Most people would fall back on the hackneyed, ‘Oh, it's corruption,’” he said. “That, to a degree, is true. But more than that, [we need] accountability — people being informed about what their chances are to increase their income or prosperity if they practice certain measures, or if they change the way they work a little bit.”

Image credit: Helene Bohyn/Better Cotton

It's been a bad year for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Budget cuts and layoffs hit corporate and academic DEI departments hard in 2022. The trend backward comes on the heels of rapid growth in the years prior. And while cuts may be one way for companies to tighten their belts as post-pandemic sales drop, future repercussions will likely bring regret.

Short-term gains, long-term losses

Cuts to DEI may lower overhead in the short term, said Ritu Bhasin, a DEI and leadership expert and the author of “We’ve Got This,” a book about finding belonging. “The problem is that the price tag is greater in the long term.”

Companies face a number of consequences when they focus on immediate cuts to the bottom line instead of valuing diversity and creating environments that are inclusive and supportive of all people. “Creativity and innovation will suffer,” she said. “And they'll be less able to capture market share.”

Bhasin breaks this down to a matter of talent, explaining that the companies making cuts to their DEI programs will be less able to attract and retain skilled workers. With employees feeling less psychological safety in these spaces, attrition will increase, and those that remain may be more cautious about sharing creative solutions.

Diversity’s positive effects on profitability are well-established. And yet, in addition to slashing DEI departments and programming, quite a few companies are unsurprisingly showing a reduction in new hire diversity since the middle of last year. 

Bucking the trend

Fortunately, not all businesses forget the importance of recruiting people from a variety of backgrounds and aligning workplaces accordingly. In particular, consumer-facing businesses are less likely to cut DEI programming, Bhasin said, because they recognize the need to reflect the diversity of their customers.

“Banking isn’t seeing the elimination of DEI either, or it is minimal [in comparison],” she said. This also makes sense, considering that financial institutions serve consumers directly and may have a better understanding of the need to reflect their customer base. 

But for industries making the biggest cuts, choosing short-term monetary profit over long-term effects “reflects an overarching underestimate of the importance of DEI,” Bhasin said. “And it demonstrates that it was a performative commitment to begin with.”

What are the solutions to widespread cuts in DEI?

So, what can be done about it? “It’s a tricky, challenging problem,” she said. “The DEI leaders who helped to grow understanding of the need are being cut. Those who raised awareness are being let go.”

Bhasin doubts employers can be counted on to see the light. “They’re the decision-makers. Who is going to convince them?” she said, noting that perhaps the DEI team or other executives can try. Additionally, employees could choose to leave or become increasingly vocal. “But that’s deeply problematic,” Bhasin said. “It puts the responsibility for change on the community that is being affected.”

She recommends a multi-pronged approach, in which shareholders, clients and consumers hold companies accountable. Depending on the type of business, some groups may have more power than others. With companies that don’t deal directly with the public, it may be up to shareholders, clients and contractors to speak up.

For those that provide consumer products and services, “we can vote by where we spend our money,” Bhasin said. “Stop consuming.” One example of this is Twitter, which has notoriously lost both users and advertisers since billionaire Elon Musk took over at the end of October 2022. 

Twitter’s DEI team was decimated upon Musk’s acquisition — reportedly shrinking from 30 positions to just two. And while that is not the only reason for the drastic drop in Twitter advertising, it certainly has a huge impact. The social media site lost nearly half of its marketing revenue as it became a bastion for brazen biases and vehement hatred.

But for all the talk of waning sales and falling profits, overall, corporations are still raking in the dough. While corporate windfalls have not continued at the rate they did in 2021, they remain astronomical when taken into long-term historical context. As such, cuts to DEI program budgets and staff are not only unnecessary, but they are also incredibly unwise. It will ultimately take all of us to set things right.

Images courtesy of Ritu Bhasin

Who doesn’t love an excuse for an espresso martini, Moscow mule or cosmopolitan? Luckily you can have your sustainable cocktail and drink it, too. In the sun-drenched stretches of the Florida panhandle, Distillery 98 produces small-batch vodka with a healthy pour of environmental responsibility.

Co-founders Harrison Holditch and David Kapitanoff pride themselves on using local ingredients and minimizing their environmental impact. “It was just a hobby turned into a profession,” Holditch told TriplePundit. “It’s kind of a long road that took us here, but this is definitely where we belong. The goal is not only to provide a great-tasting vodka, but to do that sustainably.”

As it turns out, they may be onto something.

The footprint of the vodka industry

At first glance, vodka — which is typically made from grains or vegetables — appears to have a low carbon footprint. While that’s true for a single bottle, the footprint of America’s annual vodka consumption is large, equivalent to burning 2.74 billion to 2.96 billion pounds of coal. Most of that carbon footprint comes from manufacturing glass bottles and the energy-intensive distillation process. 

Distilleries also produce a lot of wastewater, 12 times more than they do alcohol, according to a 2020 study. Unfortunately, this waste is difficult to dispose of since it’s highly acidic and contains a lot of organic matter. 

The makings of sustainable vodka 

Distillery 98 is tackling these challenges head-on. “Our new cardboard bottles have six times less of a carbon footprint than a glass bottle,” Holditch said as an example. “A lot of glass right now is coming from India and China. Not only is the carbon footprint massive when it comes to manufacturing these bottles, but shipping them over here adds to that. That’s a big reason we switched to our paper bottle.”

Distillery 98's recycled paperboard bottles by Frugalpac are lighter than glass and decompose much faster than their glass or plastic counterparts. That’s a good thing since glass breaks down extremely slowly — archaeologists found glass artifacts dating from 1500 B.C., for instance.

“We’re the first spirits in the U.S. with this Frugal bottle,” Holditch said. “But I don’t see that lasting much longer. I think it’s a game-changer for our industry.” Other spirits labels, including Johnnie Walker, have also tried out paper bottles made by other manufacturers. 

But the distillery didn’t stop at bottles. It uses sustainable swaps for other vital materials and processes, too. Carbon filters, for example, are necessary to remove impurities but are commonly made of wood or coal. Distillery 98 uses coconut carbon filters instead, a renewable, more environment-friendly option. Temperature control is another important part of the procedure, for which water is typically used to cool equipment. Distillery 98 uses renewable, geothermal energy. 

Vodka-making at Distillery 98 is also a local affair: The company uses locally-sourced corn for its vodka and donates the spent grain back to Florida farms as livestock feed. The vodka is filtered through Gulf Coast oyster shells to lower the acidity and give it a smoother taste. And in the tasting room, one bartender makes pecan liqueur on his own farm and blends it into his espresso martinis — a great excuse for one if I ever heard it. 

The distillery also sponsors recycling days and cleanup days on the dune lakes in its home base of Santa Rosa Beach and surrounding communities in the Florida Panhandle. 

Encouraged by the progress to date, the company plans to expand its sustainable practices. “We’re looking to upgrade our equipment at the distillery,” Holditch said. “Some of the things we’re talking about is bringing in a [desalination] machine. We’re going to treat the water before it goes in our stills and then clean it and continue to use it all in-house. We’re working on getting everything run by solar panels, as well. Now that we’re upgrading, we can really focus on building a green system from ground zero.” 

The future of vodka is green

All this laborious effort is worth it. The global vodka industry was valued at over $42 billion last year and is expected to grow to $56 billion by 2027, according to data analysis company Statista. Americans have been steadily sipping more of it over the last two decades, especially flavored vodkas. 

Sustainable brands may be poised to take a larger slice of this vodka pie. Consumers, particularly Gen Zers, prefer to buy from sustainable brands. They’re also willing to pay more for products that are environmentally-friendly, prioritizing this over brand name. Young people’s focus on sustainability extends to investing as well, with the majority of them planning on, or already engaged in, socially responsible and impact investments.

A cadre of sustainable distilleries 

Distillery 98 joins a growing group of spirits companies heeding the siren call of sustainability, from legacy brands like Kahlúa and Mount Gay Rum to newcomers like Dulce Vida Tequila. These companies are using organic and locally-sourced ingredients, creating reusable bottles and using production waste for fertilizer. They’re also embracing sustainable farming practices and solar energy and powering their facilities with methane gas emitted from operations.

So, next time you’re whipping up an espresso martini, make sure to use liquor brands that are doing their part for a sustainable future. Or just try the pecan one a Distillery 98, it sounds delicious.

Images courtesy of Distillery 98