Wine in a Box Will Save the World?

Afternoon All,

SuperForester Jon just sent us a link to an interesting NY Times article. Apparently, switching over from bottled wine to boxed wine would do a lot to cut down on emissions and waste, and now that we've thought about it, it totally makes sense!

Wine bottles are very heavy and hard to ship. The wine-to-container weight ratio totally favors boxed wine. Boxes don't shatter, and the clever bag-in-box storage system keeps your wine fresher much longer.

Here's some science in your look balls:

"More than 90 percent of American wine production occurs on the West Coast, but because the majority of consumers live east of the Mississippi, a large part of carbon-dioxide emissions associated with wine comes from simply trucking it from the vineyard to tables on the East Coast. A standard wine bottle holds 750 milliliters of wine and generates about 5.2 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions when it travels from a vineyard in California to a store in New York. A 3-liter box generates about half the emissions per 750 milliliters. Switching to wine in a box for the 97 percent of wines that are made to be consumed within a year would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about two million tons, or the equivalent of retiring 400,000 cars."

400,000 cars? Cripes.
Let's move on this boxed wine thing. Let's make it happen. Where do you even get it?
We'll do some looking and get back to you.

Here's the original Op-Ed piece.

(Just found a fellow blogger called The Boxed Wine Spot. All things box wine, one supposes. Check it out.)

Thanks to Jon for the heads up!