Santa Carolina wholeheartedly joins the environmental crusade. In addition to its commitment to caring for its lands as well as its rigorous work in the wineries and all of its productive processes, it now includes a Carbon Neutral® certification, by investing in energy-generating projects that benefit the states of Karnatka and Rajasthan, India.

Santa Carolina is going green. From the fields to the winery and even its employees. It now has a new commitment in the form of a Carbon Neutral® certification in which the company has a specific project to offest the pollution produced by carbon dioxide emissions.

Santa Carolina vineyards adhere to good agricultural practices, which include worker training sessions, control of applications, delimited areas of management with chemical products, and the control of solid and liquid residues, among other actions.

Special care is taken in treating liquid wastes in the wineries in order to reduce the organic load as much as possible and prepare the water for reuse for other purposes, such as irrigation. Santa Carolina therefore installed two pre-treatment plants and a large final plant for this purpose more than two years ago. “Each of the wineries channels its wastes toward these liquid waste decantation pools that use aerators and added bacteria to help reduce the organic load so that the water reaches the final plant as filtered as possible,” explains Max Ibáñez, one of the group’s winemakers who oversees one of these plants.

Concrete measures have also been taken in other areas such as production, where oil-based heating units have been replaced with gas water heaters, wastes are classified and separated for delivery to the Brisa company, which specializes in their treatment

In mid-2008 Santa Carolina decided to take another step toward environmental protection by focusing on the effects of CO2 emissions and taking on a new responsibility. The company hired The Carbon Neutral Company® to participate in a carbon footprint compensation project to offset the pollution generated in the export of its Premium lines.

Felipe de la Jara, the Holding’s General Manager and the leader of this action explains the procedure: “After quantifying our emissions and documenting the different alternatives for compensation, we decided to invest in a project that will generate electric energy for the people of India. We are therefore helping build wind turbines that will benefit the Indian states of Karnataka and Rajasthan”.

Santa Carolina’s Reserva and Reserva de Familia lines have now incorporated this environmentally friendly message into its packaging through the use of stickers, neck collars, and/or information on the back labels, as well as in all of its communications and added a distinctive logo to help promote this tremendous effort.