Bottles and the environment

Every bottle that we sell carries a 'green point' (the logo shown in the centre of the picture above), which you may have noticed on many of the products that you buy. This Green Point is an indication that we have paid, effectively in advance, for the bottle to be collected and re-cycled (assuming of course that it is deposited in the correct re-cycling container). I am informed that around 99% of all glass in Spain carries this mark, so it's nice to know that everyone is doing their part to help the environment.

Directly related to awareness in re-cycling is the recent push in the bottling market towards greater use of lightweight bottles. Personally I am in two minds about this....

The cheaper lightweight bottle is traditionally associated with less expensive wines, and therefore does not necessarily project the right image for your product. Now, I am not for one second supporting the use of the super-heavyweight receptacle (that nearly breaks your wrist when you pick it up from the table to pour a glass), but nor do I want something that will be blown over in a light breeze, or even worse, arrive broken at it's destination. There has to be some compromise.

Our bottle supplier is now offering a 'Prestige' bottle with new Eco-friendly credentials, or so they claim. It uses less glass, uses less energy to produce (and boy, does glass production use a lot of energy), and because it weighs less, reduces the carbon footprint of moving it around the world! To be very honest I quite liked the sample that they showed me, it actually looked and felt very much the same as the bottle we use now, until I put in on a scale in our laboratory.... et voila.... 103g lighter.

Without the aid of a calculator I was easily able to work out that a 12 bottle case would be more than 1kg lighter, and our average pallet could weigh between 60-70 kg less than it does now.

I think that we will certainly have to give this a try, and at least see how this new 'eco-bottle' performs on our bottling line.