Being Green
Let’s say you were
inspired by the recent posts on Organic, Sustainable and Biodynamic wines. You go to the Fine Wines and Good Spirits
store, and in an environmentally conscious state of mind, you purchase a bottle
of organic wine from a producer in Australia.
Are you doing your part for the environment? Certainly, the wine has no added chemicals,
so you must be helping, right? But, what
about that bottle that had to travel 9,614 miles? What sort of carbon footprint did that
create?
It was bad enough
feeling guilty every time we took a swig of water from a plastic bottle. But
now we also have to express remorse every time we buy wine that weighs too
much. Glass weighs more than cardboard
and plastic. That’s not fake news. It’s
a fact.
The most reliable
way to minimize wine-related carbon emissions is to avoid bottles that have
traveled by air. If possible, choose bottles that spent more time in a boat
than in a truck. Since container ships handle most intercontinental wine transport,
Americans who live east of Nebraska are better off buying a wine from Bordeaux
than one from Sonoma because the California wines would have taken a long
overland journey. Magnums are better than standard 750-milliliter bottles,
because there’s less packaging per mouthful of wine.
Or, you can avoid
the bottle completely. Important people, very important people have told me
that wine boxes are here bigly, filling the glasses of oenophiles. But the
classic bag-in-box (BIB) model isn’t the only glass-bottle alternative.
Wineries have begun using PET plastic wine bottles and Tetra Paks (often used
in juice boxes). “Green” is the new “black’!
The greenest choice is a wine made from
organic, biodynamic grapes in BPA-free, BIB containers printed with soy-based
inks and sealed with cornstarch. Only a few wineries have come this far, so
don’t worry if you can’t find a box of wine with these exact specifications.
BIB packaging has
an environmental impact. A BIB uses a plastic bag fitted with a nozzle and
nestled inside a cardboard box. Compared to the glass bottle, it is both
lighter and more efficiently packed for shipping, which reduces its carbon
footprint. The box and plastic bag inside are both recyclable, so long as your
area accepts #7 plastic.
That kind of
plastic, however, is often made with Bisphenol A (BPA). To make sure the bag is
BPA-free, inquire with the winery, or check the label. Each box usually holds
three or four traditional 750-milliliter bottles, and its collapsing vacuum bag
and airtight nozzle keep wine fresh for up to a month after opening. At the
cost equivalent of about $5 a bottle, these wines beat their bottle
counterparts for price.
According to a
life-cycle inventory of the production, transportation, and post-consumer
recycling of Tetra Paks, glass bottles, and PET bottles, delivering 1,000
liters of wine in Tetra Paks uses less energy and produces less greenhouse gas
than plastic PET bottles and traditional glass bottles, which produce 922 and
1,926 pounds respectively.
Tetra Paks are made
from a composite of paperboard, aluminum, and polyolefin resins, but only the
paper portion can be recycled. To find out if Tetra Paks are recyclable where
you live, visit
If we want to
reduce our carbon footprint from the use of wine bottles, producers everywhere will
need to deliver better wine in a box, and make it snappy. Perhaps they will if
consumers start to demand that everyday wines that don’t need to age in a
bottle be sold in a box. If you’re sorry about the change, squeeze off another
well-preserved, affordable, low-carbon serving of boxed wine and mull it over.
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