Q I’ve come across full-sized bottles of wine in plastic bottles. Some say the bottles are more environmentally friendly than glass ones but is this really the case — or is it just another example of “greenwash”?
A The waiter fumbles pouring the Chateau Oopla ’08. It falls to the floor but there is no explosion — the precious liquid spills, yet the bottle bounces. Plastic bottles are not only useful for the slippery handed. The environmental argument for them is based mainly on weight. A glass wine bottle (unfilled) can weigh anything from 300g to 1kg, while a plastic bottle weighs less than 60g. In terms of weight, wine bottles represent the single biggest item in the UK’s household waste. Britain imports more than 1.5 billion bottles of wine a year: if plastic was used more, there would be considerable savings in transport-related carbon emissions.
This applies not only to transport by road and sea. Each year thousands of boxes of Beaujolais Nouveau are air-freighted from France to Britain and elsewhere to satisfy the thirsts of consumers. Using plastic would mean considerable cost savings.
The problem with plastic is recycling. Plastic wine bottles are made from polyethylene terephthalate or PET for short. Though PET is one of the more commonly recycled plastic products, the material used in wine bottles has to have a barrier to stop the wine becoming tainted. This makes recycling more complex.
Also, although recycling rates of some plastics in the UK have dramatically improved, we still recycle only about 10 per cent of the total amount of plastic we use each year, with the rest going to landfill. Introducing yet more plastic packaging on to the market — particularly at a time when worldwide demand for recycled plastic goods is faltering — would seem a trifle unwise.
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While glass production demands large amounts of energy, it can be endlessly and relatively cheaply recycled. At present, about 60 per cent of glass in the UK goes to recycling. Yet glass has its own set of environmental problems. Mainly to shield wine against light, most producers favour green bottles. With only a small wine industry, the UK has little use for green glass: much of what’s smashed in the bottle bank ends up being re-exported, goes to landfill or ends its life as aggregate for pavements and roads.
To tackle the various environmental problems arising from Britain’s wine habit, the government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme is urging wine producers and traders to reduce the weight of glass bottles and to export more wine in bulk. Another solution would be to give up drinking — but that might be just a little too radical.
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