Q:
I’ve been seeing more and more brands of wine sold in cardboard containers and
other alternative kinds of packaging…and promoted as the latest enviro-friendly
trend. But I always thought that bottles were very good because they can easily
be recycled. Why the move to replace glass, and is this new packaging really
greener?
A:
As the wine bottles and cartons piled up in our recycling
bin over the holidays, we were asking ourselves this question too.
Unfortunately, the answer is not a simple one, and involves many “on the other
hands” and some mucking through the swamp of perceptions and marketing.
Although a few wines are
being made available in aluminum and plastic containers, the main product we’re
talking about here is the Tetra Prismaź Aseptic package made by Tetra Pak for
wine (and other drinks like juice, soy beverages, etc.) It is marketed as
environmentally-friendly and is becoming very popular with wine consumers.
Australia, Argentina, Sweden, Spain and Italy are far ahead of North America. in
embracing wine in non-bottle packages; for instance, nearly half of the wine
sold in Australia comes in a box. But Canada and the U.S. are catching up. When
French Rabbit wines were introduced in Canada in the summer of 2005, they were
available in both glass bottle and Tetra Prismaź packaging. One month later,
sales for the Tetra packaged wine were 21 times greater than the same product in
glass bottles.
A large part of the marketing for these products
focuses on how they can be shipped more efficiently due to their lighter weight
and less fragility than glass bottles, and the fact that their squared-off shape
allows them to be stacked more efficiently into warehouses and delivery trucks.
So presumably, fewer trucks are required to transport the wine, resulting in
less air pollution. (It also, we are told by our carless friends, makes the wine
easier to carry home – we’ll let you decide how many points that earns on the
eco-scale.)
One important aspect of eco-friendliness is the
amount of resources and energy used in the manufacturing process. Tetra Pak
claims that ...
Wendy Priesnitz is
the Editor of Natural Life Magazine and a journalist with over 30 years of
experience. She has
also authored nine
books.
Visit her
website.
