How the wine industry is slowly, but surely, heading towards reusing its bottles

Hardly a day goes by when someone, somewhere doesn’t announce a new bottle reuse/circular packaging scheme. That’s because the clock is ticking. Enacted legislation in many countries and regulatory proposals in others are leaving the industry with little choice but to grasp the nettle, and the opportunity to continue to ramp up their environmental credentials, potentially reduce costs and help an ailing planet.

Many countries, including France, Austria, Portugal, Spain and Romania, have already introduced legislation regarding packaging with targets set for the end of this decade. That doesn’t mean the road to greater packaging sustainability isn’t fraught with obstacles and challenges, because it is. In mid-April, Scotland’s First Minister announced a delay until March next year of the country’s Deposit Return Scheme, which was due to go live this summer. The complexity and cost of the scheme, particularly to small businesses and against the backdrop of the cost of living crisis, on top of broader issues such as posing a barrier to trade, have all proven to be major hurdles.

Reducing energy and use of resources

The wheels of bottle return and reuse, however, are in motion, driven by the incontrovertible fact that the manufacturing of glass bottles is a huge contributor to carbon emissions, and a waste of resources. The war in Ukraine and energy crisis have brought the need to move away from single-use or even recyclable/recycled packaging into even sharper focus. “The price of energy is going to continue to increase, which means that we either have to pay more or find solutions to reduce energy consumption and resources in general”, stresses Josep Maria Ribas, climate change director at Familia Torres. When it comes to collection and recycling, some countries are far more virtuous than others – whilst Europe posts fairly high rates, the US lags way behind. And figures for some countries are not even available. All of this legitimises the introduction of return and reuse schemes and Spain’s Familia Torres is one of the companies blazing the trail.

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Leveraging the power of the glass manufacturers

The company rolled out its first project in Spain five years ago and is now pushing for a Europe-wide scheme. “We are trying to create a standard of bottles that could be used everywhere in Europe”, explains Ribas, who admits that the fragmented nature of the wine industry is one of the reasons why legislation is changing slowly. Torres figures that the small number of large glass suppliers could be turned to good account: “If they really want to help the planet, it would be very easy for them to agree on a single mould or maybe two or three moulds of glass bottles that can be considered as returnable”. To avoid the logistics and environmental pitfall of having to return the bottles to their country of origin, Torres wants to see the same bottles used across Europe: “It doesn’t matter if that bottle is sold in France or Germany, for example, it would be reusable in that country”. Ribas is urging the industry to take the lead, ahead of future European legislation, so that the specificities of the industry can be taken into account: “The regulations will adapt more easily to our needs than if Europe just creates regulations”. Quizzed on the timeframe of the company’s proposed scheme, Ribas claims that it could go live within the next three years: “We were at COP 27 and we know that we are moving away slowly from the 1.5°C target – we have to move much faster”, he stresses.

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Multiple individual and collective initiatives

Familia Torres is by no means alone in its insistence on the need to expedite this process. Last month, Spain’s national wine federation FEV announced the launch of project REBO2VINO aimed at analysing the impact and feasibility of a reuse wine bottle system for the Spanish wine industry. The project has received over 550,000 euros in funding and aims to deliver its verdict by March 2025. Similarly, in London this month, the London Wine Fair is partnering with The Porto Protocol and Sustainable Wine Solutions to categorise bottle usage. A post-event report aims to help “catalyse reuse bottle schemes by showing the number of bottle types in use: how many were reusable and if they were not reusable, identify why”. Individual companies, albeit often industry giants, are also rolling out initiatives. At the end of April, America’s Constellation Brands announced that it would be pursuing “a TRUE Zero Waste to Landfill Certification in key operating facilities and significantly enhancing its use of circular packaging across its beverage alcohol portfolio…by fiscal year 2025”. And across the wine regions of countries like France, even small wineries are signing up to collection and reuse schemes, starting small but thinking big.

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Ultimately, we could see the simultaneous implementation of small, region-wide and national or even international systems because, though prompted by impending and potentially restrictive regulations along with pressure from consumers, wineries are increasingly seeing the purpose and potential benefits of steering their wine bottles away from landfill and into reuse.??