The Mountaineering Approach to Greening Our Supply Chain and Reducing Waste: A Two-Year Journey
By Sarah Richmond, Clif Family Director of Operations
At Clif Family Winery & Farm, we’ve been focused on reducing waste and greening up our supply chain. It’s much like mountaineering - when preparing for an excursion, mountaineers adopt a minimalist mindset, packing only the barest essentials. They follow a simple formula: their gear should not exceed 20% of their body weight. Packing light increases their odds of making it to the summit. Adopting this same mindset, our team at Clif Family has driven significant changes in how we handle packaging and production.
A New Way of Thinking
In April 2023, we became BCorp certified, marking a key milestone. This certification validated the work we were already doing and motivated us to take even bolder steps. We started asking ourselves: What if we applied the minimalist approach of mountaineering to our wine and food packaging? Could we reduce unnecessary weight and waste while improving sustainability?
To assess the impact of our decisions, we brought in David Jaber of Climate Positive Consulting. He quantified our sustainability decisions related to wine packaging from 2022-2024 and his analysis revealed impressive results from our changes.
Small Changes, Big Impact
A mountaineer’s first task is to shed what they don’t need. For us, that meant reevaluating the decorative foils on our wine bottles. After careful assessment, we determined they weren’t essential. So, in December 2022, we began removing the foils from our red wines. While this didn’t significantly reduce weight, it did reduced our CO2 emissions by almost 14,000 kg and would contribute a 32.8% reduction to our carbon emissions over the next two years. By the end of 2023, we had extended this change across our entire wine portfolio.
Additionally, we transitioned to lightweight glass bottles, eventually opting for eco-weight glass (397g). This turned out to be our biggest opportunity to shrink our carbon footprint, amounting to a total reduction of 18,073 kg CO2e in fossil fuel emissions over the next two years. We also switched our screwcap wines to cork-finish lightweight bottles and adopted a more sustainable composite cork for our white wines. This decision reduced the number of bottle molds in our portfolio from 11 to 8, which resulted in cost-savings for the business, streamlined our bottling efficiencies, and significantly reduced our post-production waste while freeing up space at our warehouse.
Rethinking Our Iconic Bike Cog
Recognizing the significant impact that small packaging decisions could have, one of the most challenging changes we faced was to find an alternative to the heavy decorative bike cog appliques that were hand applied to each bottle of our Howell Mountain Estate Cabernet. The bike cog is deeply tied to our brand story—our founders were inspired to create the winery while cycling through the Dolomites in Italy. We didn’t want to lose that heritage, but we also wanted to lose the added weight of the heavy metal cogs. We worked with a local screen-printing business to create a beautiful version of the bike cog that we feel proud of. This decision alone resulted in a carbon emission savings of 3,555 kg CO2e in 2024.
Communicating the Changes
We knew these shifts wouldn’t be easy. First, we had to reassure our sales teams that our wines remained high quality despite the simplified packaging. Then, we communicated our decisions to customers, emphasizing that these were environmental, not cost-cutting, choices. To our surprise, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Our customers understood the changes and supported our efforts.
The Impact
From 2022 to 2024, these packaging adjustments led to significant CO2 reductions. Specifically, we cut 33,581 kg from fossil fuels, 1,426 kg from land change emissions, 186 kg from biobased emissions, and 7,057 kg from transportation. In total, we reduced 42.2 metric tons of CO2e—equivalent to taking 10 cars off the road for a year or allowing 700 trees to grow for a decade.
Looking Ahead
Our journey doesn’t stop here. We continue to explore new ways to improve the life cycle of our packaging, including adopting reusable or refillable options, such as the stainless-steel kegs we now offer to our local wholesale partners.
Ultimately, our mountaineering approach has increased our agility as a business and strengthened our effectiveness as stewards of our Home Planet. We are committed to focusing on the essentials, one bottle at a time.
