Pop into your local bottle shop and you’re overwhelmed with options. Red or white? Rosé or sparkling? Domestic or imported? And nowadays: traditional or eco-friendly?

Although our minds tend to wander to organic farming and sulfite-free winemaking when thinking about eco-friendly wine, it’s actually the transportation of the product that produces the largest carbon footprint. Wine writer and researcher Tyler Coleman recently collaborated with Pablo Paster, a sustainability metrics engineer, on a study measuring the varying factors at play within the wine industry. The results, published in the Journal of Wine, confirmed it. “The transportation and packaging elements in a lot of cases actually end up being the most influential in terms of the quantity of CO2 emissions,” said Coleman.

As with produce and other comestibles, Coleman supports “locavorism.” But not everyone has the joy of residing in wine country — and therein lies the reason why packaging plays an integral role in how the wine industry takes its toll on the planet. Fortunately, innovations in the world of packaging are breaking new ground, all in the spirit of promoting environmental integrity.

This wine pouch weighs about 20 times less than glass bottles. These pouches have an 80% lower carbon footprint and 90% less landfill waste compared with glass.

Source: thisisbrandx.com