Wine in a carton
Green-minded people who appreciate a bottle of wine will soon no longer have to worry so much about the environmental impact of those nasty “heavy energy-intensive” glass bottles.
An article in the Sydney Morning Herald has reported on the Tetra Pak invented tetraprisma packing technology, a multi-layer carton with a screw cap. They conserve the wine practically as well as the traditional bottle, and create a massive advantage in energy savings from production to transportation of the wine.
”The tetraprisma pack is the only true glass alternative. It has minimum shelf life of two years. Wine is bottled in tetraprisma using the same filtration and sulphur regime [as bottles]. If you had to categorise the [longevity] of tetraprisma it sits between traditionally corked bottles and screw caps.”
For Peace, who exports up to 85 per cent of his wine production to the UK, US, Canada and Fiji, using tetraprisma is a win-win for the environment, his winery and consumers.
”We are finding very good consumer acceptance in Europe because it is bottle-quality wine,” he says.
it is the dramatically lower carbon footprint gained through weight savings and the reduced embedded energy accumulated by transporting his wine half way round the world that makes the new technology a real winner.
Compared to a dozen bottles of wine which weigh in at a hefty 16 kilograms and contains nine litres of wine, a 12-lot pack of tetraprisma cartons weighs a mere four grams and contains 12 litres of wine.
A standard six metre container holds 1176 cases of wine, including 10,584kg of wine and weighing 18,816kg overall. With tetraprisma that same container holds 1575 twelve packs holding 18,900kg of wine for a total overall weight of 19,530kg.
”That is substantially more wine for virtually the same weight,” Andrew Peace says.
That weight advantage has allowed Andrew Peace to almost halve his carbon footprint from transport.
Paula Goddard said:
Here in the UK, Australian wine makers Banrock Station have just released their 1-litre Shiraz tetrapack into supermarkets. The cardboard-coated sqaure pack still looks rather unusual standing alongside the more usual 75cl glass bottles, but it is adding to the glass alternatives on supermarket shelves. 3-litre wineboxes are now accepted, and only a few months ago the plastic wine bottle-look-alike entered the UK market.
The 1-litre pack looks good and the wine inside tastes good. The only thing that may put consumers off is the price. Being 1-litre, rather than the usual 75cl, it looks an expensive alternative. The pack is selling at £6.49, which works out at the equivalent £4.87 a 75cl bottle. A competitive price, but how many supermarket wine buyers will bother to work this out and just glance at the cost and pass on?
Brynmor said:
Anything that makes it easier to shop in a low-carbon manner is encouraging. A lot of consumers want to do something to combat climate change, but sadly they also don’t want to change their habits much. Initiatives like these offer the possibility for consumers to reduce their carbon footprint with little effort. Of course, a lot of people would need convincing that traditional bottles were climatically sub-optimal in the first place.