Mother Earth Day

Today is International Mother Earth Day - a day of the year to remind us to try to not proverbially defecate where we sleep.

Environmental stewardship and management is a global effort that implicates all countries. Developing countries such as Vietnam don’t have the proper infrastructure for trash sorting, disposal, and recycling. 

Of the 64,000 tons of waste generated per day in Vietnam (that’s over 48 olympic-sized swimming pools or 2 swimming pools per hour!), 7% is plastic and only 11% is collected for recycling. 

This is one issue that Sông Cái Distillery is trying to reduce our impact and footprint. 

Packaging is a huge source of waste generated by the distillery. Since we started Sông Cái, we’ve been working to be more transparent and mindful of the waste we generate. 

With our suppliers and distribution partners, we are working on reducing waste by: 

• Improved transparency on recyclable packaging materials: batches leaving the distillery will start to include information on what materials are recyclable. We start with glass. (not all glass automatically is by the way!)

• Working with domestic trade partners to take re-usable bulk packaging where applicable. @hybrib is our first partner for this program

• Improved re-usability of packaging: In 2020 we released a Tết Gift Box, and since then, box for gifts has been something we have heard from so many of you, especially in Vietnam, and Asia.

While beautiful and somewhat reusable, it was largely a one-time-use box and generated a TON of waste. Despite being recyclable, not all paper boxes are disposed of properly, contributing to environmental pollution.

Our future gift box will prioritize multi-use and recyclable materials, and we can't wait to share it with you.