Taking the Weight Out of Wine Bottles

The current uptake of lighter glass bottles by the UK wine industry is set to save around 6,000 tonnes of glass packaging every year, according to WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme).

Supermarkets Morrisons and Tesco, and wine brand owners Constellation Europe and PLB Wines have all confirmed that they have been working to use lighter weight glass bottles for wine. This will impact nearly 90 million wine bottles, generating combined annual carbon savings of nearly 4,500 tonnes, equivalent to taking around 2,500 cars off the road.

Commenting on the news, WRAP glass technology manager Andy Dawe said: "It is great to see the wine industry making such significant progress on optimising packaging which will have environmental, consumer and economic benefits."

The news demonstrates the ongoing success of WRAP´s GlassRite Wine project, which has been working with the international wine supply chain to illustrate the possibilities for using lighter weight glass bottles and increasing the bulk importation of wine into the UK.

Tesco has been working with Kingsland Wines & Spirits and manufacturer Quinn Glass to roll out lighter bottles for its Tesco branded wines. This move will save more than 2,500 tonnes of glass every year. The new bottles will be on shelf later this year.

Tesco category technical manager Andy Gale said: "The lightweight bottles will make a significant contribution to our target to cut packaging by 25% by the year 2010."

Meanwhile Constellation Europe has been working to introduce lighter glass bottles for its Stowells and Echo Falls wines which will save 2,800 tonnes of glass every year.

Constellation Europe´s packaging development manager Mike Bullock said: "The new bottles are significantly lighter than the originals, but are not radically different in shape and can be used on our filling lines without any major modifications."

In addition, Morrisons are working with Corby Bottlers with the intention of saving over 200 tonnes of glass per year from its Working Dog and William Grove wines. Finally, PLB Wines is to supply lighter weight bottles to another major retailer, saving 320 tonnes of glass per year.