Heavy-weight Fetzer Moves to Light-weight Bottles for a Happier Environment
Like many of you, we have been known to purchase a bottle or two of wine as we travel through various wine countries or visit our local wine store. And, like you again, what makes us buy a particular bottle at any given time is a function of so many factors that to try and list them all would be folly. But have you ever thought seriously about what stops you from purchasing a wine that you might otherwise enjoy? The cost of the juice? Your financial picture that day? Or maybe you simply don’t like the salesperson and decide you aren’t going to buy from them.
More and more often there is something else that keeps us from buying wine – sometimes wine we like very much. That something is the weight of the bottle. As far as we have been able to discern or learn, housing a wine in an ultra heavy container provides no advantage to the quality of the wine. That being the case, and given as well that there is plenty of good wine to be found in bottles of reasonable weight, we find ourselves (sub)consciously hefting the bottle before determining purchasability.
We wish we could tell you that we had a planet saving reason for rejecting the heavy bottles, but until recently we were not aware of the environmental impact or any alternative. We simply didn’t like carrying them (hurt the back), shipping them (hurt the wallet), or storing them (hurt the storage units).
We are the first to concede that there is much more we could do to help the nation and the planet environmentally. But we are trying. And when we see a company devoting its resources to such a project, it is worthy of note, and more than deserving of discussion and publication.
Fetzer Vineyards is one of the nation’s largest wineries, and has been working for more than twenty years toward environmental responsibility. For the past decade it has committed itself to help alleviate global warming.
Thus, almost immediately Fetzer will lightweight its entire line of wines to reduce its environmental footprint.
On an average annual basis, the new bottles will reduce glass usage by 16% (more than 2,100 tons) and affect chain greenhouse gas emissions (or carbon footprint) associated with glass bottles by 14%. Incredibly and thankfully, this is equivalent to planting 70,000 trees and growing them for ten years — or nearly tripling all the trees planted in New York’s Central Park.
The 16% glass savings is a result of technological innovations in bottle design, reducing the glass thickness, and eliminating the punt [the traditional indentation at the bottom of many wine bottles]. These changes result in multiple environmental impacts through the wine bottle lifecycle as it not only reduces the glass used, but also the energy necessary to produce the glass, and the energy required to transport the wine from the winery to consumer.
“Fetzer’s pioneering efforts at being the ‘Earth friendly wine’ is more than just an advertising tagline, it’s a philosophy that permeates everything we do at the winery,” said Dr. Ann Thrupp, Manager of Sustainability at Fetzer Wines. “Lightweighting our bottle is a double-bottom line innovation — good for the environment and for efficient operations — that supports our goal of being a sustainable business.”
The decision to convert to lightweight glass is just the latest example of Fetzer’s commitment to the environment. The winery previously conducted a greenhouse gas accounting which publicly disclosed the carbon footprint results on the California Climate Action Registry. The winery also purchases 100% renewable (green) energy — such as solar, wind and geothermal — for all its operations. Not surprisingly, perhaps, it has the wine industry’s largest solar array atop its bottling facility.
Wait. There is more. Fetzer uses recycled materials in all packaging — wine bottles are made from 35% recycled glass on average, and box partitions use 100% recycled material. This has helped the winery reduce waste to landfills by 95% since 1990. Fetzer’s well founded environmental efforts have been recognized far beyond just the wine industry, with broad awards ranging from the 2007 Best-of-the-Best Stratospheric Ozone Protection Award from the US Environmental Protection Agency, to recognition last year as a Brand With A Conscience by the Medinge Group.
It remains to be seen whether other wineries will follow suit, but give credit where credit is due. There is always a pathfinder.
www.fetzer.com 800 753-4567