Our efforts in combatting climate change go far beyond the ordinary. We are actively reducing our carbon emissions, searching for renewable ways to enhance our power supply, reducing our energy consumption wherever possible, and reusing, repurposing and recycling everything we can. We know that farming in a sustainable way and preserving all that we have for future generations is the only way forward.

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REDUCING CARBON
EMISSIONS

As an active member of the Confronting Climate Change (CCC) initiative, a carbon footprinting project developed to support the South African fruit and wine sectors through identifying and responding to the risks and opportunities associated with carbon emissions, we are able to effectively track and manage our carbon emissions. In the past two years, the estate’s emissions were low enough to be considered an industry benchmark for the CCC and South Africa.

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RENEWABLE
ENERGY SOLUTIONS

We are actively searching for ways to invest in greener power solutions. A sustainable and greener power solution will be of critical importance going forward and we want to rely less on carbon-based energy. A feasibility study has been conducted to run off solar power in the future. This solar power initiative forms part of our roadmap to 2030. Reducing our energy consumption and intensity is managed daily and since we initiated a focused call to action to save electricity, we have managed to reduce our monthly usage by 25%.

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USE OF NATURE BASED SOLUTIONS

Nature based solutions are used in the vineyards as far as possible. Since we removed the alien plant species from our farm over the past 2 decades, we have found a large population of indigenous predators returning which has resulted in a 70% decrease in pesticide and insecticide use. Environmentally friendly solutions including the use of indigenous insects like the humble ladybug to control micro pests (such as mealybug) and planting longer poles between the vineyards as perching for raptor bird species (falcons, hawks and owls) are two examples. Physical interventions like pest fibre batting is also used in some of our vineyard blocks. We hope that by 2030 we will be able to decrease our chemical use by a further 15%.

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RECYCLING & UPCYCLING

Vergelegen is committed to reducing, reusing and recycling across all entities on our farm including the winery, our hospitality offerings, gardens and all of our staff accommodation. Materials such as plastic, paper, glass, corks, cans, cooking oils and motor oils are collected from all departments throughout the year to be recycled and/or reused where possible – on average the estate will collect 25 tons of material each year for recycling. Additionally, all the grape skins and stems after harvest are composted and used in our vineyards as organic fertilizer.

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