Wine in a Box: Save Planet and Cash

Wine in a Box Protects the Environment and Saves You Money - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com.

More than 90 percent of American wine production occurs on the West Coast, but because the majority of consumers live east of the Mississippi, a large part of carbon-dioxide emissions associated with wine comes from simply trucking it from the vineyard to tables on the East Coast. A standard wine bottle holds 750 milliliters of wine and generates about 5.2 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions when it travels from a vineyard in California to a store in New York. A 3-liter box generates about half the emissions per 750 milliliters. Switching to wine in a box for the 97 percent of wines that are made to be consumed within a year would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about two million tons, or the equivalent of retiring 400,000 cars.

I don't drink wine anymore but this concept interests me. We used to have the problem of opening a bottle and not finishing it before the wine went vinegary. I further discovered that there's a darned good pinot gris (pinot grigio) made in Oregon that is sold in a box - it marries well with both Lebanese food and Southern home cooking (fried chicken, ham hocks). So I am predisposed to like box wines. Now we learn that they emit less overall carbon than bottled? Hah!

Of course you should try to drink local wines where possible. Note that trucking is much of the carbon cost. And drinking water from the tap is even greener than drinking wine, now isn't it?

Comments

[Sarah in Indiana]

But how do you factor in the added waste? Glass bottles are 100% recyclable. As far as I know aseptic boxes aren't recyclable at all.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

Good point, Sarah. I don't know how they calculated all this. Wouldn't the box be recyclable? It's the aseptic bag and spigot that are not. The box is cardboard.

Perhaps it takes less energy to produce the cardboard (and bit of plastic) than the glass?

I don't know how they calculated this. Worth disputing.