Most people, when gifted a bottle of wine, promptly pour themselves a glass. But Granny Trude can’t help doing some web-sleuthing first – starting with the organic winegrowers in the south of Italy… and ending up all a-buzz about efforts to save the honeybee in Germany.
My Dears,If I were young again, I’d work for the German Sustainability Award Foundation. What made me think of that? A bottle of wine, which happens to be the latest winner of our Eco-Projects Family Challenge. Let me tell you about it.
As you know, my family and I have lately been on the lookout for impressive environmentally sustainable projects. And so is the German Sustainability Award Foundation, which confers “Europe’s leading award for ecological and social engagement”, as it says on their website – which, by the way, is fascinating and definitely worth exploring! Thank goodness there are people out there with really good ideas on ways to help protect our environment, conserve our resources and take on the climate crisis.
Really recyclable
The winner of last year’s German Sustainability Award, for example, was Michael Braungart, a German pioneer of sustainability and co-author of the cradle-to-cradle (C2C) concept, which is all about products that are entirely recyclable. Check out his brief talk on YouTube, it’s called “Weniger schlecht ist nicht gut” (“Not as bad is not good”).You know how it is with me: I take a peek on the Internet because I’m curious about some little thing and soon enough I’m fully engrossed in other, really big and exciting matters! This time around, it all started with that bottle of wine my son Jörg brought me. He liked the label and the name, “The Flower Pot®”, and most especially the project behind it. So of course we wanted to know more about it.
Whilst savouring this tasty Primitivo from Puglia, we found out that the wine was a finalist for last year’s Sustainability Award too. And, after taking a straw poll in a family chat, I’m pleased to present the new winner of our Family Challenge today: The Flower Pot.
This fine wine is marketed by one of Germany’s biggest wineries, Weinkellerei F. W. Langguth Erben, a family business that goes all the way back to 1789. It’s in Traben-Trarbach on the Moselle River in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. As you may know, a lot of good German wines are from the steep slopes of the Moselle Valley, Germany’s oldest wine-growing region. It’s gorgeous there – and tremendously productive, with over 8,600 hectares cultivated by 2,850 vintners. It’s a must for oenophiles!
Five good reasons to like today’s Challenge champ!
- This particular wine is produced the south of Italy by certified organic viticulture, which means protecting both the soil and the local flora and fauna. That’s pretty good for starters!
- Another thing: The Flower Pot brand is a partner to Hektar Nektar’s “Projekt 2028”, a bee conservation project that actively promotes beekeeping and raises awareness about the honeybee’s vital importance to our ecosystem. So Projekt 2028 itself has the makings of a future Family Challenge winner too. More on that score below.
- A third point in its favour: The lovely, colourful label on the bottle is made of seed paper. So, if you detach it with a little water, you can plant the seed paper in soil and grow a little patch of flowers in your garden or on your balcony, thereby creating another microhabitat for bees and other insects. We were thrilled about this charming idea.
- Plus point #4: Flower Pot wine comes in a noticeably lighter-than-usual bottle, weighing only 360 grams. Lighter bottles are easier to transport, which makes for a smaller carbon footprint. What’s more, they’re made of recycled glass.
- Last but not least, green electricity is used in the production of Flower Pot wines.
Project 2028: 10% more bees
And before signing off for today, let me introduce you ever so briefly to “Projekt 2028”, that bee conservation campaign that so impressed me and is certainly another worthy candidate for our Family Challenge. The organization behind the project is Hektar Nektar, an online marketplace for buying and selling bees and beekeeping equipment. The goal of the project is to increase the bee population by ten per cent by 2028 (ten years after the launch).Projects like these are crucial in view of the rapidly declining bee population and the vital importance of bees to pollination – and consequently to our food production! Hektar Nektar (literally: Hectares of Nectar) connects beekeepers, bee enthusiasts and businesses.
Companies like the Langguth family business, for instance, can sponsor bees, which, in turn, are looked after by partner beekeepers on the company premises. What a nifty network! And my family just loves honey and wine, so it’s the perfect combination for us.
It’s truly inspiring and reassuring to see that there are so many existing projects worth sharing and so many people getting actively involved these days.
So let’s all raise a toast to the busy bees, to organic winegrowing and to the many innovative folks doing their best to save the world. I’ll drink to that!
Yours all a-buzz!
Granny Trude
PS: This is the video I was talking about, “Weniger schlecht ist nicht gut” (“Not as bad is not good”), by the winner of last year’s German Sustainability Award, Michael Braungart. I hope you enjoy it, and until soon.
March 2023