Alternatives to glass wine bottles

Are all the alternative packages green or are some of them greenwashed?

Wed, Nov 11 2009 at 10:59 AM EST

When I was working on the Eco Wine Trio review earlier this week, I came upon this Today show video. It’s a video on wines to take to the beach, and what makes each of these wines beach-friendly is that they aren’t packaged in glass.

I was curious to see how many of these wines advertise themselves as eco-friendly. Take a look at the video, then see my findings below.

Mommessin Beaujolais Grande Reserve: This wine in a kind of cool looking can is from Boiset Family Estates, the same distributor that puts out the wines in the Eco Wine Trio. Mommessin is mentioned on their packaging page as an eco-friendlier packaging alternative.

Red Truck Mini Barrel: Red Truck says on their site that the mini barrel has “less than half the carbon footprint of glass bottles.” It’s also “almost 100 percent recyclable.”

Sofia: Made by Francis Ford Coppola Winery, these soda can wines have no environmental claims whatsoever on the website.

Fog Mountain Merlot: This is one of the wines that was in the Eco Wine Trio that I reviewed earlier this week. The plastic bottles are definitely being marketed by Wine.com as eco-friendler.

Yellow + Blue Torrontes: This is an organic wine so it gets a definite eco-boost right off the bat. The website also says the bottles are “made from 75 percent paper harvested from responsibly managed forests. They’re far lighter and less bulky than bottles when it comes time for shipping.” So the tetra-packs are being marketed as eco-friendlier.

Boho Bineyards Chardonnay: Boho doesn’t say their wines are boxed wines. They say their wine is in premium cask package with 55 percent less carbon footprint than the equivalent wine in glass packaging. The outer shell of the cask is made from 95 percent recycled material and printed with soy-based inks.

Interesting, isn’t it? Seems like everyone is trying to find the eco-friendliness of their product or their product’s packaging these days. Do you think all these claims are valid or do some of them look like greenwashing?