The Quick Facts: Many wineries are focusing on the environmental impact of producing their wines. However, a study prepared by a student in Nova Scotia found that it is the consumer going to the store to buy wine that adds half of the overall environmental impact of wine. Reduce your environmental impact by buying boxed wine; going to the winery to purchase wine; buying wine by the case, instead of the bottle; and combining trips by making beverages part of your food shopping or picking up a bottle of wine on your way home from work, instead of making a separate trip.
Environmental Impacts of Winemaking
Many of us think only of the environmental impacts of growing and producing the foods we eat, not of the beverages we drink. There are various stages of winemaking that can negatively impact the environment: local vineyard practices; the production and transport of vineyard inputs; the winemaking process itself; manufacturing glass bottles; the transport of bottles to the winery; the transport of the finished product to retail stores; and then the consumer’s purchase of the finished bottle of wine.
According to a study of the Nova Scotia wine industry, the three major environmental impacts of winemaking are: the transport stages that can result in the emission of greenhouse gases; vineyard practices in treating manure and chemical fertilizers that can result in water pollution; and the use of heavy glass bottles and packaging that can lead to waste if not recycled.
As with any product, you have to get it to where the consumer will buy it. As such, the environmental impacts of transport include the many trips by truck or car a bottle of wine must take to get to your table, creating greenhouse gases and smog in the process. There is the transportation of vineyard inputs (grapes), bottles to the winery, the finished product to retail, and the bottle of wine to the consumer table. In addition, vineyard practices with regard to manure and chemical fertilizers can be a major source of water pollution. The input of nutrients from these sources contributes to the acidification, eutropification, and creation of dead zones (loss of oxygen and resultant death of living things) in water bodies. Another large contributor to environmental impacts from winemaking is the waste that results from bottles and their packaging when they are not recycled.
Wine With Less Impact
There are many aspects to deciding which bottle of wine will have the least impact on the environment. Organic wine is regulated under the same government program, the National Organic Program, as food (for more information about the regulatory program, see Real Mama’s article entitled: A Common Sense Approach to Eating Organic Produce). As a result, buying organic wine does provide benefits in terms of avoiding pesticides and supporting organic agriculture.
In addition to going organic, winemakers increasingly are also using other sustainable practices. The Wine Institute, the leading trade group for California wineries, says more than half of its members are working toward more sustainable practices including: forgoing the use of chemical pesticides to protect vines from insects and instead encouraging natural insect predators in vineyards (such as birds); reducing water usage by installing “drip irrigation” at the base of the vines; and planting cover crops between rows of vines to control weeds instead of using herbicides.
However, buying organic, sustainably-produced wine does not substantially reduce the environmental impact of your wine consumption if that organic wines travels across the country, or world, to your table instead of coming from the vineyard down the road. In that case, you may be trading benefits to the land for detriments to the air. A recent study done by a postgraduate student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia concluded that one of the single biggest contributors to the environmental impact of wine is the purchase of the wine itself by consumers. She concluded that up to half the environmental impact of wine occurs during consumer transport to and from purchasing the product.
Another way to reduce the environmental impact of your Pinot Noir is to switch to bag-in-box packaging. By skipping the bottle, you save the use of the individual glass bottle, cork, foil to seal the cork, and labeling. Cardboard and plastic take less energy to produce and, because they are lighter, less fuel to transport. Boxes of wine can hold three bottles worth of wine, appealing to your wallet as well. The Wine Group, the third largest wine company in the world by volume, states that replacing every bottle of wine sold in the U.S. with a box would be the equivalent of taking 250,000 cars off the road per year.
In addition to buying organic and boxed wine, you can also reduce the impact of your wine consumption by:
- Buying from the source (a local vineyard).
- Buying in bulk.
- Combining wine purchasing with other trips.
All of these options save resources and reduce waste.
Perhaps that organic, locally-produced, boxed wine that you buy direct from the vineyard on your way home from the grocery store will taste that much sweeter (or drier, depending on your preference!). For sure, it will be sweeter on the environment.
Information used in this article was found at the following sources, which you can visit if you want to find out more about this topic:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/Organic/OrganicWine.cfm (The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is an online and grassroots non-profit 501(c)3 public interest organization campaigning for health, justice, and sustainability)
http://www.winesandvines.com/template.cfm?section=news&content=58425 (Article in Wines & Vines magazine on study of environmental impacts of wine production in Nova Scotia)
http://www.wineinstitute.org/files/EnvironmentalPurchasing%20Summer%2008.pdf (Summer 2008 Edition of California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance)
www.betterwinesbetterworld.com (The Wine Groups major initiative to reduce its transportation weight by offering consumers wine Ten wine brands have joined together to become more carbon-efficient by offering consumers wine in bag-in-box packaging)
Tags: environmental impact, greenhouse gasses, waste recycling, water pollution, wine
