Not easy being green

ENVIRONMENTALISM is hot in the wine business. While winemakers have always had a green streak, it’s increasingly common to hear them stress their commitment to sustainable agriculture and biodynamic vineyard practices. Many wineries and wine companies promote their environmental bona fides on their websites. Organic wines have begun to find a broader audience.

This green commitment certainly extends to packaging. Boisset America, an importer based in Sausalito, has begun to sell the French Rabbit label from the Vin de Pays d’Oc region of France in what they claim is recycling-friendly aseptic packaging -- effectively, a 1-liter juice box. Winemaking giant Canandaigua (Robert Mondavi Private Selection, Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi) has also gone down this road. But despite a substantial public-relations effort on the part of aseptic-packaging manufacturers, experts maintain that the materials involved, while lighter and easier to transport than glass bottles, are costly to recycle.

“Just because you can recycle something doesn’t mean you will recycle it,” said Pat Franklin, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C.

When it comes to wine, it seems that good old-fashioned glass is best. In fact, California law requires that at least 35% of every wine bottle sold be made of recycled glass. Of course, all this enological enthusiasm for saving the planet does raise a question: If a recycled bottle is good, wouldn’t a reused bottle be even better?

After all, wine bottles are ideal candidates for reuse. They’re sturdy enough to stand up to numerous refillings, and they’re worth more than beer bottles, making them good economic fodder for a bottle-washing operation. But bottle reuse, not just in California but the entire United States, has almost completely disappeared.

Down to one

IN the U.S., there is just one company left, Encore Glass of Richmond, Calif., that provides a bottle resterilization service for wineries. And it just lost its biggest customer.

“Thirty years ago, when we started, the washing process was much easier,” said Dick Evans, Encore’s president. “There were only four basic bottle shapes and three or four colors. The sorting operation was simpler. Once the vast proliferation of shapes, sizes and colors happened, sorting became a nightmare. For that reason, we are now having a problem sustaining the quality standards that customers demand.”

This primary challenge has caused bottle-washing companies to fail in California and Washington state. And it has strained Encore’s business.

Encore’s former No. 1 customer, Husch Vineyards in Mendocino, would be delighted to once again purchase several hundred thousand resterilized bottles each year.

“It’s a shame,” said assistant winemaker Brad Holstine. “We would have liked to continue buying from Encore, but what we were getting wreaked havoc with our bottling line. We simply couldn’t rely on a consistently high-quality product.”

Holstine added that Husch doesn’t blame Encore for failing to meet its expectations. “They did the best they could,” he said. “They’re a top-notch company. But we’re here to make wine, and the soundness of our product is of critical importance from a consumer standpoint.”

Evans, who ran an ecology center in Berkeley before founding Encore, insists that reuse could stage a comeback, pointing out that in Europe, refilling is still common. (A 2004 article in the wine-industry magazine Wines & Vines noted that in France, the average wine bottle is reused as many as eight times before being retired from service.)

“I see no reason why it couldn’t happen,” he said.

For reuse to recover, big wine companies would need to get onboard, mainly by standardizing their bottle shapes and colors. Most, however, are either unfamiliar with the issue or uninterested. Michael Mattia, director of procurement for Constellation Brands, whose holdings include numerous wine, beer and spirits labels, said that “we don’t reuse bottles, but we do encourage recycling.” He added that he had “never heard of any reuse in the wine industry.”

To a degree, bottle reuse has been done in by the success of recycling. According to Mark Oldfield, a spokesman for the California Department of Conserva- tion (of which the State Division of Recycling is a part), the move in the last few years away from sorted, recyclable glass to “single stream” programs, with glass being mixed in with all other recycled materials, has made it hard for aspiring bottle-washing companies to isolate a reliable supply of undamaged glass wine bottles.

An additional obstacle is that wine bottles are not included in the California Redemption Value, or CRV, legislation (colloquially referred to as the state’s “bottle bill,” on the books since 1987). Consumers can return their empty beer, juice, soda and even wine cooler bottles to redemption centers and reclaim either 4 or 8 cents, depending on the size of the container. (Recycling companies can also reclaim these amounts.)

Importantly, this money, which is included in the price of the beverage, is defined by the state Board of Equalization as a regulatory fee, not a deposit, which is traditionally established by the bottler. “Deposits were not state-mandated,” Oldfield said. “Manufacturers did it because they wanted their bottles back.”

Recycling experts agree that reuse is ecologically superior. “Reuse is No. 2 in our pollution prevention hierarchy, under reduce and above recycle,” said Eileen Sheehan, the EPA’s region nine manager of the office of pollution prevention and solid waste. “Reuse requires energy, but quite a bit more energy is required to create new glass from recycled glassware.”

Even if wine bottles once again became easier to sort, bottle-washing start-ups would still face daunting initial costs of about $2 million to purchase machinery, rent properly equipped space, hire and train workers and transport used bottles from recycling centers and wineries.

And then there are the labels.

In the United States, winemakers have overwhelmingly shifted to using pressure-sensitive labels, which can be difficult to remove from bottles. In Europe, the wine industry continues to use glued-on labels, which are easier to get off. According to Encore’s Evans, his company has worked with several label manufacturers to develop pressure-sensitive labels that can be easily washed off, but the product never caught on with wineries.

Only in America

UNFORTUNATELY, the collapse of bottle reuse is largely an American blight. Until the 1950s, reuse of glass bottles in this country was the norm. It’s still prevalent in Latin America, Africa and Canada.

However, in the United States, the reuse of, for example, beer bottles, fell from 86% of total production in 1947 to less than 1% by 2006, according to figures compiled by the Container Recycling Institute as well as a statement issued by Anheuser-Busch in response to this report.

“Refillable packages represent a diminishing fraction of Anheuser-Busch’s sales due to the growing popularity among consumers for the lighter weight, non-refillable long-neck bottle, which is 100% recyclable,” said Douglas J. Muhleman, Anheuser-Busch’s group vice president of brewing operations and technology.

To make matters worse, said the CRI’s Franklin, centralized bottling facilities have eliminated local bottling plants, adding additional expense to transportation costs.

Consumer behavior also comes into play. Critics of reuse, who include some beverage manufacturers and retailers, argue that consumers are reluctant to physically return empty, undamaged bottles to retailers to reclaim their deposit. They also maintain that retailers don’t want the hassle of storing returned bottles until they can be picked up.

But in Ontario, Canada, where the beer industry uses a standardized bottle with a 10-cent deposit, a nearly 100% return rate has been achieved. The average Ontario beer bottle is refilled 15 to 20 times. “There’s a big benefit to the brewers in terms of lowering costs,” said Jeff Newton, eastern president of the Canadian National Brewers.

The expectations of consumers buying six-packs of beer and single, often relatively expensive 750-milliliter bottles of wine are clearly different. “It’s not like doing beer,” said Pamela Starr, winemaker at Crocker & Starr Wines in St. Helena and a 22-year veteran of the industry. “I haven’t heard any talk of reuse since the ‘80s. Of course, it would be more environmentally correct to reuse bottles. But I think you’d want to see it tried out first at the $10-and-below level.”

There is one area in which wine bottle reuse is successful, and it’s about as grass roots as you can get: home winemaking. But given that more than 30 billion bottles are used annually in California, the state would need just about the entire adult population to start brewing up their own vin ordinaire in order to kick-start a bottle refilling revival.

Some winemakers remain guardedly optimistic. “In a perfect world,” Starr said, “wouldn’t it be great if we could get the bottles back? If somebody could orchestrate it, I’d take a look.”