Glass Recycling
How green is green glass?
Wine bottles are not environmentally friendly in the UK! Every week I put out my wine bottles for the recycling. But there is a problem recycling green glass in the UK.
The UK consumes approximately 1 million tonnes of green glass each year. About 40% is produced locally and 60% imported. Even if all the locally produced glass was made from 100% recycled glass then we would only recycle 40% maximum. The actual amount is lower. We are meant to recycle 60% of our glass by 2008 or face EU fines. Sure this is an average over all types of glass and perhaps clear glass can help the green. But I think we wine drinkers should do our bit. So what can we do as a nation to meet a reasonable target. The government set up WRAP (the Waste and Resources Action Program) to help the UK meet its recycling targets. WRAP has suggested to decrease our waste of green glass we need to follow the 3 basic green principals of reduce, re-use and lastly recycle. The three options for wine is reduce the amount of glass in a wine bottle, change to clear glass so more clear wine bottles are available for recycling, and finally bottle here in the UK using recycled clear glass instead of shipping it over here.
Lets start with the weight of the bottle. The average weight of glass in a bottle is 500g but the range in weight is between 900g and 300g. If the average weight of a bottle was reduced to say 400g that would reduce our waste from green glass by 20% and get us almost to our target. But there is a cost associated with weight: lighter bottles break more easily and if you have an expensive wine you will want the glass to be touch enough to protect the wine. Heavy wine bottles feel better quality. Because of that feel some people believe that the weight of the bottle gives a good indication of the quality of the wine. In my experience this is often true, especially when comparing a £10 wine with a £4 bottle. I think this is because the incremental increase in cost of the glass is small compared to the wine's profit and the risk of breaking. But for wines below £5 this is a less significant factor. According to WRAP there is no relationship between wine below £5 and the weight of the bottle. WRAP advocate a shift to 300g bottles, but my experience with that weight is not good, so I would advocate a shift to 400g bottles as an interim step.
The next option is to shift from green glass to the more easily recycled clear glass. Before we had the issue of recycling, green glass was the default choice partly from a historic perspective and also because the green glass is thought to cut out UV light that would affect the wine. For a business such as mine I have no problems with clear glass, our wines are kept inside boxes and out of the light for all but the final moments of sitting in the sun drinking them. But for supermarkets that always put their best wines under the lights at the top of the rack this is more of a problem. I do think wines made from clear glass are fine as long as they are handled with care and the wines are not for long term cellaring. So wines such as rose and some white wines would be suitable. But this requires more work and WRAP are to announce their research early next year.
The final option is to increase our consumption of green glass. This is probably easiest achieved by bringing wine into the UK in bulk and bottling in the UK using recycled green glass. Bulk shipments are a bit like huge bag in box containers filled to the brim with wine. Not only does it mean more wine in the container increasing the efficiency of shipping, the wine then needs to be filled in the UK using green bottles, that have been recycled using our own green glass.
The final option to reduce our green glass mountain is to change from glass altogether to cardboard tetra packs or even plastic bottles. But the environmental credentials of these products are for the subject of another discussion...
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