A Toast to Saving Energy: Wine Industry Reduces Packaging

A Toast to Saving Energy: Wine Industry Reduces Packaging: "

Sometimes we don’t realize it, but it takes energy for practically everything in our lives. Not just gassing up the car, turning on the lights and taking a hot shower, but everything we buy, eat and throw away takes energy. If you want to save energy and your carbon footprint in more areas than just your home energy usage, think about all the things that you use and how they are produced, shipped and disposed of. The next time you are at a store and pick up a product or food item, think about the true energy cost from production, packaging and shipping of that one item. We as consumers can save energy by buying things that are less production-intensive, travel less and have smarter packaging.

Many manufacturers are thinking about these exact areas and how they can reduce their production and shipping costs while saving energy and the environment. The champagne and wine industries have been researching heavily on how to reduce their carbon footprint since they have the most to lose if climate change alters their terroir. While some wineries have gone to plastic bottles or boxes to lighten their energy load, there is still resistance in the marketplace to go down that route and some have redesigned the glass bottle to make it lighter.

A partnership between the Wine Institute of California, New Zealand Winegrowers, South Africa 's Integrated Production of Wine program, and the Winemakers' Federation of Australia have developed the International Wine Industry Greenhouse Gas Protocol and Accounting Tool to measure greenhouse gases of wineries and vineyards in all their production and shipping activities.

In the UK, WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) led an industry working group to design the lightest glass wine bottle, and they posted their final design on their website for others to use. The screwcap bottle is only 300g (approximately 10.58 ounces), which is 188g (approximately 6.63 ounces) lighter than typical wine bottles and made from 71% recycled glass. What really is the difference of those few grams? WRAP’s website states, “If the lighter design was adopted for all wine sold within the UK it would generate an annual glass saving of 153,000 tonnes – equivalent to the weight of more than 460 jumbo jets – and cut CO2 emissions by 119,000 tonnes.”

In the Champagne region of France, tradition is almost sacred. However, the industry has goals of reducing its carbon footprint by 25 percent by 2020 and 75 percent by 2050. Since one of their major factors in their footprint is the manufacturing and shipping of the bottles, which are about two pounds each, the industry retooled the bottle to be 2.3 ounces lighter. Great care had to go into the design since the pressure of champagne is three times greater than an average car tire. The small amount of saved weight and the slimmer shoulders of each bottle allow for more bottles to be transported in one shipment, multiplying its energy savings. Something to raise a glass and cheer about.

--Treena Colby

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