🛒 The Check-Out: Liv Dawson, Sea Change Wine

+ what's in our basket - Belu, Bread 41 and train travel!

Happy Thursday! Welcome to The Check-Out - your weekly dose of brand x sustainability inspiration, and your discovery box of what the Following the Footprints team is loving this week. It’s great to have you here. 

Wind blowing, waves lapping, sand between the toes, over €500,000 raised to support projects that help turn the tide on plastic pollution… sounds like a dream to us. Oh wait, something’s missing. Ah yes, it was a glass of Sea Change’s award winning ‘eco wine’. A UK-based brand and family business that started 15 years ago, today we’re catching up with their Sales / Marketing / Sustainability champion - Liv.

After we chat to Liv and hear her packaging pros and cons for the wine industry, we’ll share what the Following the Footprints team has loved and consumed this week. Oh, and we’re on the hunt for people / brands to feature in future Check-Outs - if that could be you, or you want to recommend a friend, I’d LOVE to hear from you!

Let’s dig in…

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> Brand Spotlight

🎙️ Behind the Brand: Liv Dawson, Sales & Marketing Manager (Sustainability Focus) at Sea Change Wine

​​👉 Hello! We’d love the non-LinkedIn lowdown on who you are and Sea Change Wine! 

I’m Liv and I’ve recently completed my Environment and Business BA from the University of Leeds. Part of my course involved a year in industry, and at the time, I was working at an indie pizza restaurant which stocked Sea Change Wine. I loved the brand and what it stood for, so I got in contact with the team to ask if I could do a project on the company. I discussed the possibility of getting Sea Change stocked in my university bar, and within a few weeks, I was successful. Sea Change were impressed with my initiative and offered me a year with them for my industrial placement.   

That went really well, so I stayed on part-time for the remainder of my time studying, and today, I’m a full-time member of the team! In terms of the ethos of the company, Sea Change Wine was set up to combine a love of good wine with a desire to help protect our ocean. Our belief is that we can all make small changes to our lifestyles which, cumulatively, add up to big impacts. We wanted to make the wine industry part of the solution, so we set up Sea Change to do things differently.  

​​👉 What’s a change you’ve made since you were founded to reduce your environmental impact on the planet?

There are lots of things we do differently to other wine brands. For example, minimal packaging which is recycled and recyclable; FSC-approved paper for our labels, which are also made partly from grape waste; natural cork closures; no unnecessary foils or plastic capsules on any of our bottles; label designs which highlight the devastating impact of plastic on our ocean; and a donation to our marine conservation charity partners with every bottle sold. We’ve just hit €500,000 in donations which we’re massively proud of – especially as we’re a small team of just 13 people!

​​👉 Many wine brands are shifting to canned, or recycled plastic, for their packaging. Tell us about your decision to stick with glass bottles!

There are lots of options out there for packaging and ongoing debate around what’s best – for Sea Change, we simply don’t want to use plastic in our products. There is a very limited amount of times plastic can be recycled (less than five typically) – and that assumes that local authorities have appropriate plastic recycling facilities in the first place, which the vast majority sadly do not. Similarly, for corks, we use natural cork, which is a biodegradable material that can easily be recycled. Many synthetic corks are made from plastic compounds so again, not something we choose to use for Sea Change Wine.

Glass is 100% recyclable and can be endlessly reprocessed without losing quality. But we’re also open to innovations and change – if a product came along that, on balance, was better for the planet we’d consider it – but we don’t think plastic is it right now. We have canned wines available as part of our range and again, aluminium is infinitely recyclable so a great option for us. Like our bottles, our cans feature our labels, which are made partly from grape waste, which would otherwise be discarded – another small difference in our approach but one which has a positive impact.

​​👉 You work with a large range of ocean-focused charity partners! How do you audit them? Any advice for other brands?

Great question! One of the most important things is to work with people who have the same ethos and outlook as you. We knew we’d found kindred spirits when we met Jo Ruxton MBE, the founder of Ocean Generation, and likewise Helen and Rachel, the founders of Sea-Changers. Jo is hugely inspirational in her work and her outlook on sustainability, and we knew straight away we’d be a great team. Likewise, the founders of Sea-Changers are both keen divers who were so distressed by the worsening pollution they could see first-hand that they decided to do something about it by setting up their own grant-giving charity – people who want to make a difference, like us.

Our charities provide us with regular feedback on where and how we’ve been supporting them. They all have outputs which make it straightforward to see where their donations are being implemented. For Ocean Generation that’s the number of people accessing and attending their learning resources and workshops, for Sea-Changers it’s the number and range of grants they are providing, and for Olive Ridley Project it’s the size and scope of their rescue and rehabilitation work. It’s really rewarding to see how our partner charities are growing alongside our own growth as a brand. 

​​👉 Ok, magic wand time; if we could grant you three wishes for the drinks industry, what would they be? 

Two of my wishes centre around one theme – breaking with tradition! So…

1. Firstly, I’d like to see the removal of foils and plastic capsules on wine bottles. They are totally unnecessary and are simply removed and thrown away – single-use waste at its worst. 

2. Secondly, the notion that the heavier a bottle of wine, the better the quality is outdated and means the move to lighter weight bottles has been slower than it could be.

3. My last wish is for drinks to not be sold in containers that are likely to end up in landfills – hopefully, the increasing trend for cans and continued innovations in other packaging will help this become a reality sooner rather than later.

​​👉 How do YOU keep up with regulation, industry innovations, climate news and other brands?

From my studies, I’m well aware of what’s coming up in the sustainability sphere regulation-wise, but I’m also out and about for much of my time meeting stockists, customers, and venues, so I hear a lot straight from the coal face, which is just as valuable!

​​👉 Finally - we’d love some recommendations; one climate-related resource, one person to follow online and one consumer brand that’s killing it! 

• Ocean Generation is a fantastic site for all things climate and ocean-related. They run three UNESCO-endorsed youth engagement programmes for 3-25-year-olds and there are loads of free resources across the site.

• I’d recommend following @Rootfull – an amazing material innovation company that is using the power of plant roots to create unique biodegradable textiles by guiding plant root to “weave” unique artefacts and surfaces. We recently supported Rootfull at the Chelsea Flower Show and we’re sure they’re on their way to great things in the future!

• My brand pick is Social Supermarket, a B–corporation that brings together social enterprises, small businesses, and purpose-driven brands under one roof.

A HUGE thanks to Liv, and the Sea Change team, for chatting with us!

Sea Change’s Prosecco, having the time of it’s life. Source: Brand’s Own.

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> In Our Basket

🔎 What we loved and consumed this week:

1. From Leone in London: Who knew, Belu has a lemonade! Tastes delicious, partially because I just love the brand AND because all profits go to WaterAid. For bonus points, check out our coverage of Belu’s commitment to decreasing their impact. 

2. From Katherine in London: I scored some seriously cheap Eurostar tickets to Paris - just £39 one way! Can't wait to skip the hassle of liquid limits and airport lines, and instead, kick back in a comfy seat on a direct ride to the heart of Paris. Nothing beats the ease and comfort of a great train journey!

3. From Rosalin in Manchester: I went to Bread 41, my first B-corp bakery, while I was in Dublin over the weekend. Can confirm, sustainable pastries do taste better and I think the queue of people out the door would agree with me!

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That’s it for today! 

• Know a brand we should spotlight next? Let Leone know! 

• Have links that can make the team learn or laugh? Share them with us, we might just share them in The Check-Out next week. 

• Hungry for more? You’ll see us on Monday! That’s when we suit up and get serious, digging into a topic that is guaranteed to make you look smart at standup. Take a look at our dive into fashion regulation this week.

Much love, 

Team FTF