Jun 20 - Californian Winemakers Seek Sustainability in Reusing Bottles
A company based in Sonoma, California named Wine Bottle Renew is revolutionizing the way many Californian wineries are doing business by offering a bottle washing service as an alternative to recycling.
Although the amount of wineries jumping on board in currently small, this eco-conscious trend is catching on, already a concept employed by Canada’s beer industry, according to an article in the San Diego Union Tribune.
The practice represents a level of producer responsibility in which companies take responsibility for the disposal or in this case reuse, of the products they sell. According to Scott Cassel of the Product Stewardship Institute in Boston, "The environmental impacts of that [reusing bottles] should be less than collecting the bottle, crushing the glass, and remanufacturing it into a bottle again."
CAW has fought for the implementation of producer responsibility in a variety of consumer products, including paint, carpet, and other products containing toxic chemicals. To read more about producer responsibility and what CAW has done in the past to support it, click here.