How Boxed Wine Can Help Our Planet

Many times we hear about products and automatically associate stereotypical terms with them. This weekend I was watching the morning news and an special on boxed wine came up. Automatically I thought "cheap wine" just because the norm is that wine is suppose to be elegantly poured out of an dark, tinted bottle. Never do we see elegant commercials about wine being poured out of a box. It was later in the special that I learned all the important aspects of boxed wine and how it can truely help out planet.

Boxed wine has many benefits to our pockets and our planet. The first is that is it much more cheaper that the bottled version. In Australia it is valued at about $8 US dollars for four liters. Also unlike bottles wine, the boxed version lasts longer. When exposed to the air for a certain period of time, wine starts to go bad. The boxed version is in a vacuumed-sealed bag within the box, keeping it fresh due to the lack of exposure to the air. The benefits of boxed wine to the environment are also seen in the fact that the manufacturing of glass contributes greenhouse gas emissions, generates nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide all of which when inhaled can cause tiny particulates that can damage lung tissue. Transporting wine across the country also causes a lot of problems. Transporting wine from the West Coast to the East Coast generates a lot of carbon footprinting. A standard wine bottle which holds 750 milliliters of wine generates about 5.2 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions when it travels from a vineyard in the West side to a store East side. However a 750 milliliters standard 3-liter box generates about half of that. By switching to boxed wine we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about two million tons which is also the equivalent of removing 400,000 cars from the roads.

A brand of boxed wine advertised is called Yellow+Blue. As the name suggests it is environmentally green. It is certified organic wine, made with no pesticides and no synthetic fertilizers. It is produced in Tetra Paks which are made from 75% paper harvested from responsibly managed forests. They weigh far much less and is less bulky than bottled wine when it comes time for shipping. If people start making small changes which greatly helps themselves save money, theay can also greatly help the environment.