Eco-Spirits Extremely Affordable

On a recent trip to the liquor store I came across 360 Eco Friendly Vodka. It was priced at $19.95 and I decided to give it a try.

The packaging includes a lot of useful information about the company’s environmental impact. It claims to be the first and only true eco-friendly premium vodka and has received awards in taste, quality, packaging and marketing. I am no vodka coinsurer, however I thought it was good and better than the similarly priced Skyy Vodka.

The store only had the regular 360 Eco Friendly Vodka, but after researching on the Web I discovered that 360 also distills cola and double chocolate flavors.

The vodka comes in an 85 percent recycled glass bottle and 100 percent recycled eco-friendly paper products are used in the labeling, packaging and promotional materials. The shipper uses 100 percent recycled cardboard. Environmentally friendly water based inks are used for printing of all materials. A program called Close the Loop was developed for the metal bottle closures with the purpose of enabling infinite reuse which reduces waste and conserves resources needed to produce new closures. The vodka came with an envelope with prepaid postage to return the closure.

The vodka is four times distilled through an energy efficient process, with every bushel of grain being fully utilized and nothing going to waste. The vodka is also five times filtered at a facility that has improved its eco-footprint measurably over the past five years. All grain is locally grown to significantly reduce fossil fuel consumption in transporting raw materials to the distillery.

According to an Eco-Audit with calculations based on research by Environmental Defense and other members of the Paper Task Force, the Earth Friendly Distilling Co. saved the following resources in the production of 360 Vodka’s labeling:

• 193 fully grown trees
• 82,766 gallons of water
• 9,255 pounds of solid waste
• 139 million BTU of energy
• 18,052 pounds of greenhouse gases