Innovation & Technology Regeneration & Resilience

Aspen Vodka Raises Spirits Sustainability to a Whole New Level

Aspen Distillers’ new, carbon-negative facility — the world’s first LEED Platinum-certified distillery — includes a parcel dedicated to regenerative agriculture and pioneering water re-entry processes, and is designed for net-positive energy use.

By Geoff Nudelman | Published 3 months ago | About a 4 minute read

Image: Aspen Vodka

There is no shortage of spirits companies touting sustainability initiatives — whether that’s a commitment to renewables or biodiversity conservation, or embracing circularity by upcycling spent ingredients and adopting closed-loop packaging and distribution solutions.

But at its core, spirits production is resource-intensive — requiring lots of energy and water to distill the product, along with the required freight to get it to the consumer.

These considerations make Aspen Distillers’ LEED V4 BD+C (Building Design + Construction) Platinum certification — the highest-possible for manufacturing — a notable achievement, even for a relatively small operation.

The LEED certification process is rigorous. The US Green Buildings Council (USGBC), which oversees the program, requires applicants to meet a number of environmental-savings requirements — including water treatment, energy performance, land protection and more. Platinum is the highest of four levels of certification; according to a recent Westword piece on the distillery, only 1,500 US projects have achieved Platinum certification.

Aspen Vodka founder Matt Patel told Sustainable Brands® (SB) that the toughest part of earning the certification was meeting LEED’s stringent material-sourcing requirements for a fast-tracked construction project that came to life during the pandemic and at a somewhat remote locale at nearly 8,000 feet in elevation.

“The challenge was out there, and we were willing to accept it,” Patel says.

A distillery built for the future

Image credit: Aspen Vodka

The 18,000-square-foot, carbon-negative distillery opened in June and is initially operating just a couple of days per week. While Patel declined to share volume numbers, he says he hopes to build up to a capacity of 12,000 cases by the end of the first year of operation. He adds that he hasn’t calculated the potential maximum capacity of the facility, as the brand builds out long-term projections.

“We entered the partnership with Aspen Vodka and the distillery because we believe they can carve out a space in this category,” says Sean Penn, COO of spirits incubator WES Brands —which began a strategic partnership with Aspen Vodka earlier this year to help the brand grow into more markets.

The premium vodka brand is already touting impressive potential figures about the distillery’s sustainability performance — the facility is fully electric and net-positive energy, meaning it’s designed to generate five times more energy than it consumes with both on- and offsite renewables and battery storage. There’s also a complex water-treatment process that returns all used water to the nearby Roaring Fork River cleaner than when it entered the distillery. Aspen Vodka claims the distillery has a 26 percent reduction in embodied carbon through a verified building lifecycle assessment, and it offers spent grains to nearby Dooley Creek Farm as supplementary livestock feed and compost.

From sustainability to regeneration

Image credit: Aspen Vodka

But Patel says the company isn’t resting on its laurels; its next ambition for the distillery is to earn the ILFI’s Living Building Challenge (LBC) certification — the most advanced measure of sustainability in the built environment — which will take at least another year.

Through the LBC process, Aspen Vodka collaborated on a plan with the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (ACES) — which develops models for replicable, regenerative agriculture where food production can restore soil biodiversity and mitigate climate change —that utilizes nutrient-rich sediment from ACES’ restoration project of nearby Hallam Lake Nature Preserve to provide a sustainable soil amendment for the distillery property and help improve aquatic biodiversity at Hallam Lake.

Part of the Living Building Challenge, referred to as the “Place Petal,” requires restoring previously disturbed areas in order to invite nature’s functions “back into a healthy interface with the built environment;” the Aspen Vodka distillery sits on a rehabilitated lumber yard, where a special focus was put on revitalizing the soil.

But the vodka brand is working with ACES to enhance the long-term, regenerative impacts of the distillery: The two organizations are piloting a new extension to the ACES Agriculture Apprentice Program that will enable interested graduates to operate a regenerative farm on the distillery land — to help cultivate the next generation of farmers while serving as a local ingredient source for culinary partners in Aspen.

In the meantime, Aspen Distillers’ holistic approach to future-proofing spirits production is proof of concept for larger spirits companies that distilling can have a substantially lower — or even, positive — impact while being commercially viable.

“I had a singular goal not only to make the world’s best vodka, but do it in a way that I could feel good about,” Patel says.

Geoff Nudelman

Geoff is a freelance journalist and copywriter focused on making the world a better place through compelling copy. He covers everything from apparel to travel while helping brands worldwide craft their messaging. In addition to Sustainable Brands, he's currently a contributor at Penta, AskMen.com, Field Mag and many others. You can check out more of his work at geoffnudelman.com.

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