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Posted to alt.food.wine
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cost of wine to the environment
On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 16:17:01 -0700
wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 11:39:53 +1300, "st.helier"
> > wrote:
>
> >"cwdjrxyz" wrote ...............
> >>
> >> I wonder if Sicily is the best place for this type of study. Consider
> >> Mt. Etna. I would not be surprised if it belches out by far more sulfur
> >> compounds in various forms(including sulfur dioxide) than wine
> >> production in Sicily does. :-) .>
>
> Well, yeah, but then there's that whole thing of how much global
> warming and air pollution is caused by methane gas from cowpies, too.
> 
>
What I find personally interesting is that my "environmental footprint" is
not limited to wine consumption. Personally I would have thought it a
particularly benign process, being largely natural and all that. Not much
like, say, commercial pork farming, or computer PCB production.
Here's a quick back of the envelope calculation. Average wine production
is 271,212,000 hl. Using the sicilian numbers,
271,212,000 hl * 1 l/100 hl * 1 bt/0.75 l x 0.016 kg/bt ~= 58 metric tonnes.
Is that a lot? Not compared to a volcanic eruption. (Mt St Helens emitted
about 4 orders of magnitude more). Of course, it's a little bit specious to
use the analogy, much like saying Lets keep that coal fired generator, it
produces almost nothing compared to Vesuvius! (I do understand the
humor of the situation, though).
I came across figures that UK power production (2003) produced 677
metric tonnes of SO2, refineries about 63. That puts wine production
about on par with refineries on an annual basis.
Is that negligible? Of course not. Can it be substantially reduced? The
Sicily study says it can. Should we be concerned about reducing it?
I think so, but you can decide for yourselves!
> I think the point he's trying to make is that certain items and
> products now contributing to the waste stream don't necessarily have
> to, or could be substantially reduced, given proper care and more
> environmetally conscious management techniques
>
> >Yes, there are chemical containers and plastic wrap around bottles (all of
> >which can be recycled or otherwise disposed of with care and attention) -
> >but 10 tonnes is OTT.
>
At the Sicilian operation they are now recycling but previously it went to
landfill.
> How does one dispose of a plastic "cork?" That's got to be one of the
> stupidest ideas for wine packaging I've ever seen. Yeah, I know all
> the arguments for it (and plenty against it), but the bottom line is
> that we'd have millions of those things filling up landfill trenches
> if every producer went plastic. My real corks get recycled and
> re-used, and if I had a decent parrot to grind them up (hah!) I'd mix
> 'em into the compost bin.
>
> Similarly, what does one do with styrofoam from wine shippers? (Or
> from any other product?) I can only re-use or recycle so much of it.
> The rest inevitably goes to the dump because, at least as far as I
> know, there's no commonly accepted system for recycling styrofoam.
>
Indeed. AFAICT the study doesn't seem to deal with any impact once
the bottle leaves the winery.
-E
--
Emery Davis
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