Do you still need convincing?

Published: 23 July, 2008

There is seemingly no end of organisations, both public and private, that have been set up to advise and convince businesses to cut their carbon emissions, here three of the main players, WRAP, the Carbon Trust and WWF, set out what the drinks industry should be aiming for.

The WRAP Retail team is working with the retail supply chain to encourage and enable businesses to reduce waste.

WRAP's GlassRite Wine and GlassRite Beer, Cider and Spirits projects are investigating the economic, technical and quality issues associated with lightweight glass bottles and the bulk importation of wine and beer into the UK by working with the whole of the supply chain including winemakers, manufacturers, retailers and brands.

The UK is the largest importer of wine in the world, with over one billion litres imported every year. Around 80% of this currently arrives bottled. Much of this wine is imported in green bottles - not all of this green glass can be used in the UK, as most manufacturing is of clear glass containers.

Importing wine in bulk saves transport costs and emissions and also creates a market for the green glass to be used in UK manufactured wine bottles.

Currently wine bottles on UK shelves vary in weight between 300g and almost 1kg. By moving to lighter-weight bottles, drinks companies can reduce the amount of glass in the waste stream and save transport and material costs and carbon emissions.

The GlassRite project already involves the likes of Morrisons, Tesco, Asda, Constellation Europe, PLB Wines and Kingsland Wines & Sprits. To date it is expected to save a combined annual weight of just under 6,000 tonnes of glass.

For more information on using lightweight bottles and transporting wine in bulk can be found on WRAP's website at www.wrap.org.uk/retail, by emailing glassrite@wrap.org.uk

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