How about wine in a PET bottle? Sounds weird, right. What if it was a lighter carbon footprint than glass, saved shipping costs and had more content? Well, here it is: Fog Mountain 2006 Merlot is in a 1 liter bottle. Don't know how much a 1 liter bottle is? It's 33% MORE than the traditional glass bottle we buy at the store. At, this is great, a 60% lower carbon footprint than glass.
If you've at all followed the different "packaging" controversies in the wine industry (cork vs. synthetics, corks or synthetics vs. screw tops, glass vs. anything else, etc.) you'll appreciate what a giant step this is.
The Boisset family, which owns De Loach in the Russian River Valley, has released this screw-capped wine in a one-liter plastic (PET) bottle with a stylish label and a silvery-green package. All the vineyards the Family owns in the US and France are organic or are achieving organic status and are biodynamic (a good new word for my GreenSmart Glossary). They appear to have a strong commitment to lightening the carbon footprint of the Company wherever possible.
Here's the link to the site with the info Fog Mountain. Be sure to click through the links to the details if you're interested.
On a totally related PET note, this article comments on the $20 million investment being made by a company in the plastics industry to recycle PET. Plastics Packagers Step Up Recycling Efforts.
Not only that, but, in the second half of the article, Native Waters of Fall River, MA is called our for a biodegradeable PET (?). Then, even more fun, governments (mostly Europe, unfortunately) appear to be asking (requiring) the plastic industry to improve the recycle rates.
I even found a new magazine: Recycling Today. If you're me, that sounds pretty fun. If only I had more time.
