New Wine in New Wineskins

I prefer the term “pouch” to describe a bag that contains wine, rather than a “bladder,” don’t you? I mean, if you say, “wine bladder”. . . who knows what you’re talking about? I don’t even want to go there with wine bladder. I’m sticking with pouch, or more likely wine-bag in a box.

I'm following up on wine bags, pouches, bladders like I told you I would. Some feel it is the next trend in sustainable packaging. Wine is in a plastic bag with a spigot, and the bag is in the box. Why does this bring sustainability credentials for packaging, you may wonder. The box and bag are lightweight, and lightweight is good because heavy shipping causes more energy to be consumed in transport and therefore more emissions. Owing that most U.S. wineries are on the west coast, and the majority of our wine is consumed east of the Mississippi, wine shipping can cause a notable carbon footprint. As an industry, wine producers are now beginning to address reducing their carbon footprint.

They say the idea for packaging beverages in bags came out of Australia in the 1960’s. We know, don’t we, that wine and other liquids were packaged in goatskin bags centuries before that. But, putting a spigot on a bag and putting the bag into an easily stackable box, that innovation did hit the streets in the 1960’s coming from down under.

I do remember buying milk in a box for a time in the ‘60s. It fit conveniently into our small refrigerator, but the invention had a short run in the U.S. In Europe, however, it gained momentum. This I learned at the 2007 Sustainability in Packaging Conference last spring. It appears that beverage pouches may be the future.

Here are some factoids I gathered while looking into wine-in-a-box:

• For dinner wines that are intended to be consumed within a year, aging in a bottle isn’t a major factor.
• Boxed wine can be kept longer after opening, up to four weeks, compared to a day or two for bottled wine.
• The US is poised to become the world’s largest wine market
• 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.

Here is a tidy and fun You Tube video of a couple of guys who call themselves Lab Dads evaluating a few boxed wines.

Info on the next Sustainability in Packaging Conference can be found at:

http://www.sustainability-in-packaging.com

New Wineskins

I’ve been talking for a week about glass bottles, and I never mentioned wine bottles. Here’s what I have to say about that. Recycle them.

I got side tracked on wine. I became intrigued learning about the possibilities for alternative wine containers, something along the lines of a wineskin. Although I’m not familiar with wineskins, the exception being the reference from the New Testament:

“ Neither do men put new wine into old wine-skins. . .”

Wine.skin: “a bag traditionally made from the skin of a goat.”

A bag for wine, a pouch is an evolving trend for wine packaging. Eeewww. Why?

I’m working on it. I'll get back to you.

Old Glass Mountain Coming Down

Part 5 in a series – The Value of Glass

Here it is! “Recycle Glass Day!” Can you feel the excitement?

My adventures in glass recycling started in Atlanta and I’m returning to that visit to forecast the future.

The Mount McKinley of all glass piles that lay in the back lot when I visited Strategic Materials (SMI) had a more seedy appearance than the cullet piles, not quite so sparkly. According to Hazel Mobley, glass specialist and our tour guide, this pile of old bottles of every color has been accumulating for years in anticipation of the day when technology would arrive to sort the muddled array of colored glass where all colors of glass end up in the same curbside recycle bin.

Until now the barrier to co-mingling all color bottles has been the labor of separating glass by color to be recycled back into new products of the same color. The future is upon us and particularly at SMI as they prepare to implement a new single-stream operation where all colors of glass coming from one humongous heap will be sorted by machine.

Now you wonder, how does a machine sort a mountain of dirty old glass of all different colors?

By dropping it.

First the glass, primarily from bottles, is broken, washed and placed on a conveyor where it’s vibrated into a single layer moving along. At the end, it drops off the conveyor into free fall. As glass pieces are falling, they pass in front of scanners capturing the images at a rate of 10,000 pieces per second. The scan is identifying a selected color (e.g. looking for green, looking for clear, looking for amber, etc.).

At the same time color is being scanned, a metal detector identifies metal pieces and separates them out. The glass of the determined color is selected and separated by a blast of compressed air. Other color pieces continue on to be scanned and singled out by color in another drop.

My description is quite simplified, but what I’m trying to tell is that technology has arrived to make possible rapid glass recycling from a single stream of multi color glass.

We have an ancient commodity that is endlessly recyclable, trustworthy for health safety, and beautiful enough to wear as jewels, and we’re throwing it away. How silly we are.

The Glass Packaging Institute announces the winner of the student YouTube Competition. University students enrolled in packaging science fields participated. The submissions are terrific! The winner is almost a tear jerker. You can watch it at http://www.gpi.org/recycleglassday/youtube/.

For a more in-depth explanation of the Morgensen glass sorting technology

Gentleman Jack

Part 4 in a series- The Value of Glass

The rolling hill country just outside of Lynchburg, Tennessee, a stone building with broad front porch plus a guide in overalls - -the atmosphere at the Jack Daniel Distillery was a combination of mountain moonshine and southern hospitality. And here I was on a quest for recycled glass.

The story: In the later 1800’s when he was just 13, Jack Daniel of Moore County, Tennessee, helped a local preacher run a whiskey still. The preacher ran the still, but while helping him, Jack learned the recipe. Now when the preacher finally made his choice to go entirely for God and give up his still, the recipe fell to Jack.

That’s pretty much how our tour of Jack Daniel Distillery started as we followed our tale-telling guide, Roger, pouring out history in authentic Tennessee twang. “Here’s the site where it all started. This here was Jack’s office and this safe right here is what broke Jack’s toe and caused him to get gangrene and die, leaving the recipe and the business to his nephew Lem.”

If Roger-in-overalls made the tour interesting and fun, he made another point more emphatically - - every step in the Jack Daniel whiskey process is exceedingly quality-controlled.

Recipe:
Corn from Illinois and Indiana = 80%
Barley from Minnesota = 12%
Rye from Wyoming = 8%
Limestone filtered spring water
Ferment in 40,000 gallon vats

Charcoal: To make white lightning sour mash into whiskey, it drips through vats 10 feet deep in charcoal. The only way to be certain the charcoal is pure of chemicals is to make it yourself from hard sugar maple wood. Jack’s charcoal is made right here.

Spring water: Roger-in-overalls took us to the mouth of a cave on the property from where the limestone filtered spring water flows. He told the importance of water with no iron and the value of Jack knowing the whereabouts of the water for the preacher’s whiskey. Jack bought the spring. The distillery now owns 900 acres all around the spring to ensure that no farming with chemicals can occur to affect the purity of the water.

Barrels: Aging in the barrels gives the whiskey its unique flavor and color. A Jack Daniel cooper makes the whiskey barrels out of American white oak, caramelizing the inside of the barrel with fire. The amber color of whiskey comes from the wood of the barrel where it sits for 7 years, the barrels expanding and contracting with the seasons.

Bottles: We’d arrived too late to see the bottling process. As you recall, we’d spent the morning sifting through glass pebbles with Hazel Mobley at Strategic Materials in Atlanta. But it wasn’t the whiskey pouring that interested me; I wanted to know about the square bottles. I made my way to the front of the tour group to ask Roger, “Do you make your own bottles too?” “No ma’am. The bottles are manufactured by Owens-Illinois.” I recalled that Owens-Illinois was on Hazel’s list of glass manufactures that buy cullet.

I think that’s the picture Hazel wanted me to see when she suggested this visit. For all the hyper detail to perfection and control in whiskey making, at Jack Daniel they trust the glass to be what it always is - - safe, inert and consistent with Jack’s whiskey, molded to Jack’s own bottle style, 100% recyclable forever.

Really . . . Jack Daniels in plastic? If you find it that way, don’t drink it. It ain’t real.

Girlie Plastic Beer Bottles Not Hanging at the Bar

(Part 3 in a series - The Value of Glass)

Beer, wine and whiskey in plastic bottles? Not so much. Alcohol trumps plastic in the glass-plastic-alcohol game. Oxygen and chemicals tend to leach into alcoholic liquid when it’s in plastic resulting in shorter shelf life and ruined products, a factor that is not an issue with glass containers.

“Glass is inert,” reminds Joe Cattaneo, President of the Glass Packaging Institute. “Glass doesn’t react to chemicals. Glass presents the true flavor of the product, preserves its purity and quality, and increases shelf life.”

Not that PET beer bottles are non-existent. MillerCoors started bottling in PET in 1998 for use in stadiums and other outdoor sport events. In October they reported use of plastic bottles is now at 10 percent. On the issue of health and PET alcohol containers, the New York Times reported on November 28 that PET bottles were safe as containers for alcohol according to conclusions by Food and Drug Administration.

Let’s try it again

Between 1969 and 1973, some alcoholic beverages were packaged in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) bottles, but that gig came to an end as PVC was strongly suspected as a carcinogen while in the company of alcohol. PET, on the other hand, although it has also been charged as a possible health threat, has recently been acquitted and given the green light as alcohol containers.

Nevertheless, PET alone is not sufficient to protect the product from oxygen ruin, altering the taste and quality. An additional barrier must be added to the container by lining the inside to prevent deterioration of the contents. The consequence is that the multi-layer design interferes with normal PET recycling process.

Glass still looks best as an entirely recyclable commodity with no health issues. Now when I asked Hazel Mobley the glass specialist in Atlanta about the manufacturers that buy cullet, she mentioned several large well know glass companies then she skipped to another thought.

“Didn’t you say you’re headed north through Tennessee?” Indeed, yes. “You know, you ought to take the tour of Jack Daniel’s distillery in Lynchburg. Now that’s one retailer I know that’s really particular.”

Well, aw-raaat! I don’t drink whiskey, but I’m up for checking on Jack Daniel, where apparently everything matters, including glass. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

Link: Australian bars use bottle crusher machine

Factoid: North Carolina law requires bars to recycle.

Day #2 -Sad Soda Bottles

(Part 2 in a series -The Value of Glass)

Hearing that most recycled glass bottles aren’t reused was sad news to my husband. For such a techie guy, it’s ironic he prefers the idea of returning glass pop bottles to the store, like in the old days, to be trucked to the bottling plant for cleaning and refilling. Crushing glass bottles into pieces called cullet then sending it back to manufacturers doesn’t feel right to him. It’s a nostalgia thing I guess, but there is an argument to be made on that point.

Cleaning and refilling bottles takes much less energy than remanufacturing bottles.

On the other hand transporting these bottles back to the plant takes a lot of energy. Bottling plants aren’t local anymore. What was once a local bottler is now only a distributor and bottling has been consolidated regionally making bottling centers farther apart. That’s how plastic containers got a big foot in the door, by saving on transportation and processing.

The 1960’s began the age of plastic and Nat Wyeth, engineer brother of artist Andrew Wyeth, was working for DuPont Chemical. Hearing that attempts to use plastic bottles for carbonated soda beverages had failed, Wyeth asked why. The answer was that plastic bottles couldn’t handle the expanding carbonation. Wyeth tested for himself. He filled a liquid detergent bottle with soda and placed it in the refrigerator. Yep, it blew up just like they said it would.

Working at DuPont, it took Wyeth ten years and more than 10,000 attempts to find the solution: polyethylene terephthalate-PET. He created the plastic bottle that would contain the expanding carbon dioxide and also pass the two-meter drop test. Once the industry was onto lightweight throwaway plastic bottles, glass soda bottles were left behind.

Today there remain only a few soft drinks committed to glass bottles, mainly for brand recognition. IBC Root Beer is one such beverage.

But real beer - - for decades real beer took a stand against those girlie plastic bottles. Why’s that? Coming up next - the beer bottle and bar report.

Did you know? The IBC in IBC Root Beer stand for Independent Breweries Company of St. Louis. IBC root beer was introduced in 1919 during prohibition as an alternative to alcohol.

Factoids:

• Glass is made from sand, soda ash, and lime heated to 2500° F
• The first discovered glass was caused by intense heat from erupting volcanoes
• Earliest glass was made into jewelry beads
• Around 14 AD containers were made by blowing molten glass on a tube
• Before 1903 all glass bottles in the U.S. were hand blown.
• The 1920 census reported that 5000 glass bottles existed in the U.S.

Link to Glass Packaging Institute

When Driving on Glass is a Good Thing

(Part 1 in a series on The Value of Glass)

It was my own doing that I awoke worrying about having a flat tire on Interstate 75. This would be the consequence of a furtive drive down a lane sparkling with chunks of glass. Furtive because instead of waiting until my appointment to visit the Southeast’s largest glass recycle processing company the next day, I convinced my husband that we should scout our way to the site so we’d know how to find it in the morning.

Our feminine voiced GPS sometimes messes with us by smugly announcing, “Des-ti-nation” at the wrong address, usually about a hundred feet too soon. When she declared we had arrived at the glass recycling plant on Atlanta’s south side, we found ourselves staring at an overpass next to railroad tracks. We thought she’d fooled us again, but a glance to the side confirmed we were at the right place. A bedazzling heap of colored glass the size of a circus tent lay just beyond the tracks.

We headed over the track to investigate, committing our vehicle onto a one-way glass splattered lane.

I needn’t have sweated. During our legitimate visit the next day, Hazel Mobley, glass consultant for Strategic Materials Inc. (SMI) the largest glass processor in North America, scooped with her bare hand a fistful of glass pieces like those we had driven over and sifted it through her fingers.

“Honey, this glass won’t hurt you,” she said, and I believed her. After more than 32 years in the business, Hazel knows glass. “This is cullet. It’s processed recycled glass. Manufacturers make this into new bottles. Pretty, isn’t it?”

Indeed it was an enchanting sparkling mound, as were other piles of blue, green and brown cullet on the lot. Piles of glass destined for rebirth as new containers.

Glass is one commodity that can be recycled again and again, saving as much as 75% energy when cullet is used. The glass process is a closed-loop sustainable business. There is no limit to the number of times glass containers can be reprocessed into new glass containers.

Did you know that December 10 is Glass Recycling Day? I didn’t think so. That’s why for the next few days I’m going to be filling you in about glass. You can thank me when Glass Recycling Day gets here next Wednesday, and you won’t be lost out back when the parade starts. University students are in a contest for the best glass recycling promotion. Winners will appear on You Tube on the big day.

Stats from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

• Glass from food and beverage containers is infinitely recyclable. The quality does not diminish.
• 90 percent of recycled glass is used to make new containers
• Other uses for recycled glass are kitchen tiles, counter tops, and fiberglass wall insulation and pavement
• Americans generated 13.6 million tons of glass in the waste stream in 2007
• About 24 percent of the glass going through the waste stream was captured for recycling

On a national scale about one fourth of glass in the waste stream gets recycled and most of it from drink bottles. Next I'll tell you about what happened to glass - - when plastic soda bottles blew up.