Environmental & social awareness
Goedhuis & Co are committed to continue making changes to become as environmentally and socially responsible as possible and are always open to suggestions as to how we can improve upon this further.
We have a dedicated Green Team who tackle and monitor our social and environmental performance.
The last few years have given us pause for thought and time to consider our ambitions and priorities as a business: of course great wine, our suppliers, customers and team, but also the impact we have on the world we live in. So, like many businesses we committed to going carbon neutral and (external audit pending) achieved that goal in 2022.
We started with recycling corks, KeepCups and filling our offices with plants, and moved on to employee incentives and office programs such as electric car and cycle to work salary sacrifice schemes, sourcing all electricity needs from renewable sources, and prioritising use of rail wherever possible for both national and international travel, to reduce our carbon footprint.
In addition, we have invested in the following Carbon Offsetting projects from Tree Nation and Respira International to bring us to carbon neutral status. We will be reviewing and implementing similar projects on an ongoing and permanent basis.
STORAGE & DELIVERY
We store our wine in Octavian Corsham, which is built 100 feet under the hills of Wiltshire in solid Bath stone providing the perfect natural environment for fine wine cellarage without wasting energy on temperature or humidity control. We consolidate both our shipments from abroad and our domestic deliveries in order to reduce our carbon emissions.
PACKAGING
We deliver all our wines in their original packaging where possible to reduce waste and re-use packaging and boxing. All case and box waste is recycled. We introduced a new range of packaging in 2012 created from 100% recycled material. We are committed to ongoing communication with suppliers to ensure both packaging and transportation are achieved in the least environmentally impactful way possible for each supplier.
PAPER TRAIL & RECYCLING
We are continuing to reduce the number of printed offers that we send out and circulate the majority of our wine news and offers via email, social media, our website, telephone or good old fashioned face to face. We prefer and encourage our clients to pay through our website using their online account and invoices are always sent out electronically unless there really is no email address available. Recycling bins are positioned inside of our offices and we encourage everybody to make use of them for all recyclable refuse, including paper, glass and corks. For the latter, we work with Recorked UK.
ENERGY & CARBON FOOTPRINT
For domestic business travel, we prioritise rail travel whenever possible, both for domestic and international travel. Many of us cycle to work and we have implemented the Cycle to Work scheme in the office for a more environmentally (and economically) friendly way to move around London, and have also introduced a similar electric car salary sacrifice scheme. To conserve energy and reduce waste, we have switched to exclusively renewably sourced electricity providers, use motion sensitive lighting in the office and use air-conditioning very selectively. We are looking for ways to be more efficient.
HEALTH & FITNESS
Goedhuis are extremely active! Currently, we have Goedhuis members currently playing tennis, football, training for marathons and teaching Bikram yoga. We have showers in our London offices so we are able to run/cycle/skip into work or pop out at lunch.
COMMUNITY SUPPORT
Johnny and Laura (Goedhuis) set up Carefree Northants charity (reg. 1140093) to help in a number of ways to improve the lives of those who have learning disabilities and we continue to support them with fundraising events and activities. They also hold the leading wine dinner in the UK, ‘The Wine Dinner’, which has taken place every 2 years since its inception in 1990, and which attracts many top wine lovers and collectors and a number of prominent wine growers from both Burgundy and Bordeaux. The Wine Dinner has now raised in excess of £4 million for children and care-based charities, with the most recent 2021 event raising £300,000 for JDRF and The Goed Life.
ALCOHOL AWARENESS
We are members of the Drinkaware trust, which highlights the dangers of alcohol misuse through innovative and challenging campaigns online, in print and in communities countrywide and also partners of the Public Health Responsibility Deal in which we commit to taking action voluntarily to improve public health through Goedhuis’s responsibilities as employers, as well as through our commercial actions and community activities. We also make an annual donation to The Drink Trust, formerly The Benevolent, which provides support, care and assistance to the drinks industry workforce since 1886.