Environmentally Friendly Wine: Steps on how to Drink Green

“Save the Earth, it’s the only planet with wine!” - The world is taking notice of how different industries are impacting the environment and the wine industry is no exception. Have you always thought wine is an environmentally friendly product, since it is made from grapes and grown at beautiful vineyards? Reality is that factors such as growing practices, packaging, shipping method and distance to Hong Kong all contribute to the impact that wine has on the environment. But how do you know if the wine you’re drinking is hurting the environment? Here is a guide with simple steps to help you drink green: 

The word "organic" is a trendy term that makes people willing to pay twice as much. Organic wine doesn’t have to be overly expensive, but you can expect it to be a bit more expensive than the cheap supermarket wine. To put it simply, certified organic wines are produced with organically grown grapes, where the vineyards are regulated through specific ecological guidelines prohibiting the use of any synthetic pesticides or fertilizers. Organic wine is marked with the EU organic certification label that is easy to spot. Learn more about certified organic wine HERE

     Step 3: Packaging Matters

The packaging of wine has the biggest environmental impact. And unfortunately, there isn’t a simple way to choose more environmentally friendly wine packaging. It comes down to picking the lesser of two evils, cork vs screw cap. The pros and cons of natural corks include less energy to produce and it’s made from wood, a renewable material, but it’s estimated 400 million bottles of wine go to waste each year because of bad corks due to the processing of wood. Screw caps can ensure the wine won’t go bad, but the negative side is more that it is not a renewable material and manufacturing is more harmful. The arguments for which is better can go on for days, but unless you plan to do something crafty with your corks, there really isn’t an environmental winner. If you are feeling crafty check out our Wine & Upcycling Pinterest Board

 

 

Did you know that glass is 100% recyclable and can be re-melted infinite times and nevertheless about 400,000 wine bottles are thrown into Hong Kong landfills every day? That is 146 MILLION a year, and that’s just wine bottles. Recycling in Hong Kong is surprisingly difficult, collection bins are not always easy to find and the ones you typically see don’t include glass. But glass collection bins do exist, with a bit of research we found a list of collection points all over HK – find one near you HERE. Start simple, set aside your empty bottles, then pick a day each week and take all your bottles to the collection bin. Small recycling efforts have the ability to create real change in HK, changes that we can actually see on our beaches and in our ocean.