A 2021 Italian wine study, cited by Liz Thatch in Forbes.com, found the main contributors of greenhouse gas emissions for wine are: the glass bottle (29%), electricity in the winery (14%), transport and distribution of wine to the consumer (13%), heat used in the winery (9%) and fossil fuels used in vineyard (8%).
If that’s the case, we wonder, why aren’t most wine brands packaged in bag-in-the-box packaging or in cans, either of which would involve less gas emissions to produce in the first place, and if the cans were infinitely recyclable aluminum, less likely to have negative impacts on the environment?
Of course, some might say that white table cloth restaurants need wine to be in bottles to produce a bit of a “show” when serving. If that’s the case, they might follow the example of Chandon and work to reduce the weight of glass bottles Those lighter-weight bottles could be sold to restaurants while wines produced for consumers are in boxes or cans.
Many U.S. wineries have gone to solar or wind power, but with electricity used in the winery the No. 2 source of wine-related greenhouse gases, why haven’t more wineries gone to solar and/or wind?