Producing Fine Wine while Saving the Environment
Milazzo, a small winery in Italy, boldly agreed to be audited by researchers at the University of Palermo to calculate the environmental cost of producing one bottle of red wine in 2004. The verdict? Milazzo was polluting like crazy. Each bottle of wine created more than a pound of waste and put 16 grams of sulfer dioxide. The 100,000 bottles of the 2004 vintage created 22,000 pounds of plastic waste, 11,000 pounds of paper waste, and plenty of wastewater.
However, don’t feel bad about drinking Milazzo’s wines now. They’ve changed the entire process to become more environmentally friendly, and simultaneously, they’ve even saved some money. Hopefully, this eco-friendliness will spread to other wineries to assuage that overwhelming guilt you feel when you drink wine. Wait. You don’t feel guilt? Must be the wine talking.
