Wine Industry Calls for Alternative Packaging Now

Wine professionals and businesses, including Jancis Robinson MW and Hugh Johnson OBE, have signed an open letter calling for an immediate change to how wine is packaged in the UK.

The letter, spearheaded by Wine Traders for Alternative Formats (WTAF), describes the environmental impact of glass manufacturing – and says that a switch to alternative packaging could save “over a third of the carbon footprint of wine consumed in the UK”.

Alternative formats in current use include boxed and canned wine, kegs, and paper bottles and pouches.

Oliver Lea, a founding member of WTAF, commented, “The wine sector is duty bound to hit the target set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 43% this decade. That should be an absolute minimum – and the only way of achieving it is a significant shift away from glass bottles.”

“I think a growing number of high-quality wine producers will move into alternative formats,” says Lea. “There is a range of alternative formats that can get us a long way towards reaching the emission cuts that we need to make. We know that wine consumers are motivated to buy sustainably.

“The more they discover these formats, the more they will act.”