The portal for the auto-evaluation of environmental sustainability
This is a collaborative platform sustaining innovation and technological transfer in the winemaking holdings of the Vino Nobile di Montepulciano Consortium. A portal addressed to those looking for interactive tools for the self-assessment of environmental sustainability and for information regarding top technologies with low environmental impact. Lastly, this is a useful portal to share experiences and respond to the strategic challenges of growth and competitiveness.
Sostenobiletà is the ideal tool to address efficiently the environmental and productive challenges of winemaking holdings and of protection consortia of the new millennium.
How to Adhere
Do you have a winemaking holding? It is time to self-evaluate your environmental sustainability!
Sostenobiletà is environmental sustainability self-assessment tool both for companies and for the territory. This platform implements a sustainable protocol based on the SOPD di Equalitas model that allows those managing a winemaking holding to calculate, in a self-service way, their environmental sustainability.
Evaluate yourself! you can contribute to the overall sustainability of your territory, demonstrating the incredible efforts put forth by the Vino Nobile di Montepulciano Consortium while respecting the environment.
The self-assessment is simple, you can do it entirely online, and it takes in consideration agriculture practices of the vineyard, of the cellar, and in the bottling and conditioning process. By accessing the platform, you can also calculate the biodiversity indices, the company’s carbon footprint, and you can insert the company’s water footprint values. This will allows you to quantify the company’s impact and implement the most effective sustainable practices.
How was born the idea?
Sostenobiletà is a project co-funded by the Region of Tuscany within the EAFRD of the 2014-2020 Rural Development Plan – Integrated Project of the 2015 Supply Chain entitled “The Noble-age in a glass: 50 years of Nobile di Montepulciano”. It relates to the sub-measure 16.2 “Support for pilot cooperation projects”, a measure aimed at promoting pilot projects that give concrete answers to companies by promoting experimentation and applicability of technologies, already developed by research but still to be contextualized in the production Tuscany.
The project has been elaborated with a clear overview of the entire denomination and its productive territory and was born thanks to the active collaboration between the Municipality of Montepulciano, the Vino Nobile di Montepulciano Consortium and the Department of Sustainable Engineering of the “G. Marconi” University. Furthermore, this project represents the completion of a series of initiatives aimed at the sustainability of the production cycle of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, which began in 2014 with the project on the Carbon footprint of the DOCG of Vino Nobile.
Professor Umberto di Matteo from the DIS – Department of Sustainable Engineering of Guglielmo Marconi University – scientifically coordinated the initiative. The project sees the participation of three pilot companies: La Vecchia Cantina di Montepulciano (project leader), Tenute del Cerro SpA – Fattoria del Cerro, and Soc. Agr. Salcheto srl. The partnership is completed by: Qualità e Sviluppo Rurale srl and the CIA Agricoltori Italiani Toscana.
Sustainability Protocol
The modern and integrated approach to sustainability is based on three fundamental pillars:
– economic sustainability, understood as the capacity to generate income and work;
– social sustainability, understood as the ability to guarantee equitable conditions of human well-being;
– environmental sustainability, understood as the ability to maintain the quality and reproducibility of natural resources.
Sustainability is the continuous process recalling the necessity to conjugate the three fundamental and inseparable dimensions of development.
In this context came to life the development of a wineries “Platform of Sustainability” implementing a sustainable protocol based on the Standard SOPD of Equalitas.
The adopted standard provides for objective and verifiable requirements for each of the three pillars of sustainability, defining good practices and indicators that include all the best practices available in Italy and abroad.
In addition, for each activity at the winery and for each pilaster we created a questionnaire providing all the questions necessary on the topic: good agriculture practices in the vineyard, in the wine cellar, of bottling, good social practices, economic, of communication and of quality insurance.
The sustainability indicators considered are three: biodiversity (aquatic, air and soil), carbon footprint and water footprint; the first two can be calculated directly on the portal. This allows companies to monitor their sustainability and define the possible areas for improvement, also assessing the effectiveness of the actions taken.
Depending on the managed processes, there are six possible types of companies for which the questionnaire is automatically customized:
1. Agricultural company (companies that cultivate uniquely grapes),
2. Wine Cellar (company that only transforms the grapes),
3. Bottler (company that bottles/packs only),
4. Winery (a company that cultivates and transforms grapes),
5. Cellar-bottler (company that transforms grapes and bottles/packages),
6. Complete winery (company that cultivates, transforms and bottles/packages).
Both the questionnaire and the three indicators are based on three types of requirements set by the protocol: Major (M) requirements that must necessarily be met, minor requirements (m) that must be met in a minimum percentage, and Recommendations (R) that are points for improvement and which must also be met by a minimum percentage.
In order to fully satisfy these sustainability requirements and obtain a relative score, companies must comply with all the major requirements, 30% of the minor ones and 10% of the recommendations in a three-year period. They must also calculate all three indicators, biodiversity, Carbon footprint and Water footprint. In order to encourage a process of improvement for companies that adopt this standard, a gradual process has been envisaged, which stimulates the adoption of increasingly complex requirements, which at the same time are complete with respect to the pillars of sustainability. The questionnaire is divided into dichotomous or multiple-choice questions that may require the loading of an attachment and/or the selection of a frequency, in which case the requirement is satisfied only if all these operations are fulfilled.
