NYC – Vodka Into Hand Sanitizer

When New York City based Air Co. launched its technology based alcohol business in September last year, they had a mission; “Make the world’s highest quality and most sustainable vodka”. The Brooklyn based company developed an award winning process for making vodka that converts carbon dioxide into alcohol and mixes it with water to create the spirit. The result; “The most sustainable vodka” – further stating that “each bottle produced is equal to the daily carbon intake of eight trees”.

Founded in New York City by Greg Constantine (a former Diageo executive) and Stafford Sheehan (a Yale PhD), Air Co has been building its brand one restaurant and liquor store at a time. They hand pour each bottle, to further reduce their carbon emissions and use Earth Enterprise to print their labels – a printer who plants tree’s in Central America to offset their carbon footprint.

As fate would have it, the Coronavirus has altered their plans a bit. Now, instead of selling high end Vodka,  they have redirected their entire production capacity toward producing hand sanitizer, every bottle of which is being donated throughout NYC. Fortunately for its local citizens, Ethanol also happens to be the main ingredient in hand sanitizer, which is generally between 60% and 95% alcohol.

According to Greg Constantine, “We’re going to be directly supplying all donations at the advice of the city,” and “are also looking to work with local restaurants to have them provide food delivery drivers with our sanitizer given that bars and restaurants have had to shut their doors to patrons, leaving delivery services at the forefront of food services here in New York City.” New labels have been produced by Earth Enterprise, and more trees have been planted to offset those emissions.

All of these efforts show that when times are tough, people can still pull together, stay innovative, and keep marching forward toward a greener planet. The project has been so successful that Earth Enterprise is already printing another 50,000 labels for Air Co.