Give a Shit.

A distillery shouldn’t just care about crafting delicious booze. It should care about its community and environment as well - and by care, we mean seriously give a shit.  

Sustainability is at the centre of everything we do, from the farmers we work with to the packaging and shipping methods we use to deliver Økar to your door. 

It's essential to measure our impacts in a transparent way that puts our money where our mouth is - literally and metaphorically - because it doesn’t mean much if you can’t prove it. 

Our Mission: 

To create an agricultural demand for native Australian plants by crafting great bevvies that reflect Australia’s (or ‘Straya’s to our mates) awesome continent and culture. 

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Our Impact:

Agriculture

By using native Australian ingredients, we’re helping future-proof Australian farms by building consistent demand for plant species that are designed to grow in our harsh climates - plants that minimise water use, fix nitrogen levels, desalinate soils and regenerate Australia’s beautiful landscape. Who says Aussies can’t save the planet?

Using native species cuts agricultural water use by an average of 50% in comparison to similar introduced species.   

Energy

We’ve installed a new 27.23kw solar energy system at the distillery, which helps offset our carbon footprint. Currently, it does the job of around 557 trees a year, which is pretty gnarly if you ask us! This is on top of our current carbon offset programs that have reduced our carbon output by whopping 15%. 

By 2023 we want 100% of all our energy use to be from a renewable source.

Waste

Økar Tropic is a little trash legend, with every ingredient originally destined for landfill. We use reclaimed grapes from broken contracts (and actually pay the growers a good price), leftover spirit from our amazing copper pot stills, Kath and Kim, unused orange peels from Nippy’s juice and some native tamarinds that need a home. From ground to glass, Økar Tropic reimagines what ‘waste’ really means and turns what’s considered agricultural trash to treasure. 

We dramatically reduced our use of stretch film pallet wrap for shipping goods due to buying an automated system that monitors our use for greater efficiency. This resulted in a reduction of stretch film use by 67%.   

Community

For us, community is what keeps culture alive. Every drop of Økar is for the locals and we want to pay that back by supporting independent farmers and producers to maximise our input back into the community. 

This year we sourced 39.77% of all of our produce from farms within 80km of our distillery, keeping logistics emissions low and building our community. 

By 2023 we want to be sourcing a minimum of 50% of our ingredients from within that distance.  

We’ve donated $30,795 to different projects last year alone, with a total of 21 organisations receiving support. This donation amounts to 0.45% of last year’s annual turnover. 

Our goal for 2021/22 is a donation of 0.6% of our yearly turnover - about $51,000 

Acknowledgement of Country

We're proud of the sunburnt country we call home. Australia has an ancient history of land management and agricultural practice that extends far beyond our colonialist era. Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? (2021) by Peter Sutton & Keryn Walshe, and Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu (2014) are awesome starting points to understand the massive timeline of indigenous cultivation in Australia.

We acknowledge and pay respects to the Peramangk people, the traditional owners of the land on which we operate.

In South Australia, we harvest produce from Wiradjuri and Ngarrindjeri peoples land. In Queensland, Mandandanji, Bar-Barrum, Ngadjon, Jirrbal, Bundabarra and Wadjanbarra peoples land. We pay our respects to the traditional owners of all lands on which we harvest produce* and extend this acknowledgement and pay our respects to all First Nation elders, past, present and emerging.

We recognise that this land was and always will be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land and that sovereignty was never ceded.

We’re also working on drafting our Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) and will make it available once its completed.

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*With some of our produce coming from third party aggregators, we are not currently able to find out the exact origin of the land our produce was grown on. We are working every day to increase this transparency and will amend this acknowledgement as we find out more information.