Yealands Wine Group is committed to a company Code of Conduct and Ethical Practices and has impleted an ethics policy to provide direction and compliance. Read more about it here.
Yealands Estate Wines has become the first winery in the world to carry the DQS Green Company GC-Mark for our winery operation at our Seaview winery in Marlborough. DQS Group (DQS) based in Germany are one of the leading certification bodies for management systems worldwide. DQS have developed a checklist of criteria to obtain a Green Company GC-Mark that is based on national and international recognized standards and regulations. To receive a Green Company GC-Mark, a company must succeed in “minimising its negative impact upon the environment.”
The Green Company GC-Mark was approved alongside an ISO 14001 certificate, the international global standard for an Environmental Management System within businesses. This ISO maps out a framework that a company or organisation can follow to set up an effective environmental management system. In the case of Yealands, the ISO 14001 certificate was awarded for the management of the environmental aspects and impacts associated with winemaking at Seaview Winery.
When it comes to sustainability and the environment, Yealands is no stranger to world firsts, having been the first winery in the world to be certified carboNZerocertTM since inception. Sustainability is at the core of our business with many positively impactful initiatives in place, such as the use of miniature Babydoll sheep, burning of vine prunings and solar and wind power. Another notable initiative is our composting programme, which addresses an industry-wide landfill problem. While composting has been used by farmers for centuries, Yealands’ innovation comes from working beyond its vineyard boundaries to secure positive environmental impact. Along with our own grape marc waste, partnerships with the aquaculture and forestry industries have driven compost production to more than 50,000 tonnes annually providing benefits to the wider Marlborough region.
Yealands Wine Group was also named as the world’s most sustainable wine producer at the Green World Awards in 2014. Increasingly, sustainably produced wine plays an important factor for our outcomes globally. Independent sustainability awards not only allow us to objectively appraise our company-wide practices within an international context, but also continually ground us in our on-going mission to be the world’s most sustainable winery.
