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Do you know why cork is used to seal wine bottles?

Which is less damaging to the environment: 4 x 0.75L glass bottles of wine or one 3L BIB (bag in box)?

  • Glass recycling seems to be a reasonably mature technology, but what about the cork (or plastic stopper) and the plastic film/metal cover for the cork? With a BIB, cardboard recycling seems to be a reasonably mature technology, but what about the plastic bag, the plastic tap mechanism and the handle? Which alternative (and no, I'm not giving up wine) is most efficient in terms of: energy and raw material usage used to create the original container; which has the smallest amount of non-recyclable materials (i.e. sent to landfill) and which one uses the least amount of resources (electricity/other fuel, water) for recycling.

  • Answer:

    Q: Is box wine more ecological? Short Answer: Yes.  If consumers will adopt it. Here is a post that details the topic from Wine Folly http://winefolly.com/review/boxed-wine-benefits/ We also talked about wine closures: Cork: http://winefolly.com/tutorial/how-wine-corks-affect-aging-wine/ Synthetic and other: http://winefolly.com/tutorial/alternative-wine-closures/ Longer Answer Box wines use polyurethane which is not designed to age for years.  Boxed wines actually have an expiration date.  However, most wine that is produced is meant to be drunk in the year it's produced.  The problem with box wines is that the consumers have not yet adopted them for fine wines. Box wines are about 96/4 wine-to-container vs. bottles at around 60/40 If a quality producer comes up with a creative solution, the market will change.  Bottles, for the most part, are inefficient. Deloach Winery (pictured above figure 3) came up with an elegant idea that's creative to improve presentation http://www.deloachvineyards.com/Wine-Shop/Barrel-to-Barrel

Madeline Puckette at Quora Visit the source

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What Madeleine Puckette has to say is incredibly on point with regards to recyclability and consumer adoption of BIB wines. Another important question to be asking when evaluating this is which form of packaging is the most efficient to transport.  A large portion of wine's environmental impact comes from loading it onto trucks/containers/trains/boats and shipping it to consumers using primarly fossil fuels to propel it.  On this front, Bag in Box, is significantly better than bottle, because you can pack more into smaller places, and cardboard and plastic are much lighter than the glass used to package the same amount of wine. Another competing technology is keg wine.  Wine is shipped to the point of packaging (Which is usually quite close to the final market) in bladders, if it's not made locally, and then put into kegs and served through a tap system similar to beer (this is mostly for restaurants obviously).  The kegs are reusable, as are the bladders (in some cases).   A limited usefullness, but a very low impact packaging methodology.

Jake Kosseff

If the bottle has a real cork then it should be biodegradable. The bottle can be recycled if you dispose or it correctly or you can reuse it yourself. The foil is a minor issue. The box is a composite of cardboard and plastic. It is unlikely that most recycling centres would take the trouble to try separating them. Hense the box is destined to landfill. If you separated them yourself, then the card might get recycled. The bag and stopper are probably two different kinds of plastic and efficiently grading plastic for recycling is still difficult. So the bag will probably still end up in landfill.   Transportation is also an issue if you want to be truly green. Eating locally produced food can make a significant difference in ones carbon footprint. Buy wine from your local area rather than ordering wines produced on the other side of the globe.

Derek Harkness

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