The Message in a Reusable Wine Bottle: Combat Climate Change

Glass bottles are the largest source of the wine industry’s carbon footprint. Several companies are experimenting with new shipping methods.

Last month, a 24,000-liter hermetically sealed plastic container, or flexitank, carrying organically grown pinot grigio from Sicily arrived in a cargo container at Filling Station East, a wine packaging facility near the port in Bayonne, N.J. The wine was for Gotham Project, a company that specializes in kegged wine, which it sells to bars and restaurants in almost 40 states. The Sicilian pinot grigio, the equivalent of about 32,000 750-milliliter bottles, was siphoned through a thick hose from the flexitank into a 6,400-gallon stainless steel tank. Eventually, it will fill kegs, cans and bottles. But those bottles will not be the ordinary single-use wine variety that should be recycled (but more likely get trashed). These Gotham Project bottles are intended to be reused multiple times.