Hard seltzer brand serves up something new

Premium British hard seltzer brand SERVED, co-owned by musician and climate and nature champion Ellie Goulding, becomes the “world’s first” carbon negative hard seltzer brand to introduce carbon footprint labelling.

SERVED has partnered with CarbonCloud to automate the ‘Life Cycle Assessment’ process and analyse the climate footprints at all stages from “grower-to-grocer”, which covers the production of agricultural inputs, transport, processing, packaging and distribution up until the product reaches the shelf of the grocery store. The carbon footprint labelling will be launched next month (April 2022).

“Independently certified carbon labelling provides much needed environmental transparency – it allows consumers, who are increasingly looking for more sustainable choices, to make informed decisions on the products they consume,” said SERVED’s Co-founder Dean Ginsberg. “We hope this will help drive improvement across the food industry and encourage healthy competition to ‘race to the bottom’ in terms of emissions.”

The brand states that the new label displays the carbon dioxide equivalents (CO₂e), a value which converts the varying effects of different gasses into the equivalent amount of CO₂ it would take to create the same greenhouse effect.

“The real power in calculating and understanding your climate footprint at every stage of your production process is that it allows you to find hotspots, build future scenarios and focus on making incremental improvements over time,” Ginsberg added. “Sourcing the right packaging materials has therefore been an absolute priority. We assess both the carbon footprint of packaging materials and their level of recyclability. We use aluminium cans that are manufactured in the UK, because they are produced using high levels of recycled aluminium and are infinitely recyclable themselves, which is vital to create a circular economy.”

SERVED’s drinks are infused with ‘wonky fruit’ that would have otherwise gone to waste for aesthetic reasons alone. By upcycling fruit that is bent, bashed, and/or bruised, the company is able to reduce food waste and save tonnes of perfectly good fruit from becoming food waste and contributing to emissions.

The drinks company has also partnered with Planet Mark, an internationally recognised sustainability certification for businesses. Working with Planet Mark, SERVED aims to reduce their carbon footprint by five percent year-on-year by taking direct action on the areas they control.

SERVED is “proud to be a carbon negative business and the world’s first carbon negative hard seltzer”, Ginsberg added.