In the world of going green, our choices are becoming better everyday. More organic and natural sustainable products are out there, and as our choices grow, the prices fall. Supply and demand is a beautiful concept, isn’t it?
Entering into this fray is an organic wine called Yellow and Blue. Organic to the core, they not only have some terrific varieties of wine, they also claim to have the lowest carbon footprint of any other wine maker and supplier. How’s that for being bio-friendly?
First of all, lets get into the wine itself. They offer two varieties of wine, a Malbec, which is their name for a red, and a Torrontes, which is their version of a white. They have actually won medals for taste and are reported as being delightful for the palate.
However, all is not perfect in the world of organic wine. These wines are made in South America, and getting them to consumers is going to be expensive. After all, more than 95 percent of the wine in the United States is made in the country as well. A good portion of that comes the California vineyards and trucked across country.
The traditional way to ship wine has been to fill the bottles at the winery, load them in a truck, and send them off to distributors. This technique is still in widespread use today, but it is a very inefficient and wasteful way to ship wine. Why? Because, not only are you shipping the wine to retailers, you are also shipping the heavy glass bottles as well. All that extra weight burns more fuel, puts more gunk in the air and leaves a heavy carbon footprint every time someone hoists a glass of their favorite beverage.
There’s a better way, and that is the Yellow and Blue way. They ship their wine in bulk containers all the way up to the states, which means more wine delivered, with less shipping being done. And it gets even better. Instead of the typical glass bottle, they package their wines in a Tetra Pak.
A Tetra Pak is a completely recyclable product made of wood pulp with an aluminum foil liner. It is essentially a carton, similar to a standard paper milk carton, that is separated out with paper products, and recycles in that way. It holds the flavor of wine as well as any glass bottle, and needless to say, it is incredibly lightweight.
The weight and the paper content are what makes Yellow and Blue the winners in the carbon footprint race. The numbers tell the story. It takes 1/3 the amount of energy to make a Tetra Pak over a glass bottle. Fifty-two tractor trailers with all of their fossil fuel burning pollution are needed to move one million empty glass bottles, while only two tractor trailers are needed to move one million Tetra Paks. Not only that, but a glass bottle is about 50 percent wine and 50 percent packaging, while a Yellow and Blue wine coming to you in a Tetra Pak is 95 percent wine, and five percent packaging. Overall that equates to a little over half the carbon footprint of all the other wines out there.
Next time you're craving a glass of wine, try a little Yellow and Blue. It's organic, the winner of several taste test awards and uses responsible packaging with one of the lowest carbon footprints in the business. Enjoy!
Source: BecauseAction.com
