Do you love wine, but are also concerned about its carbon footprint? The carbon footprint of wine includes production, packaging, and transportation. Wine is grown using energy intensive petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, processed through heavy machinery and packaged using glass, corks, glue and labels. That heavy bottle then needs to travel thousands of miles before it ends up in your glass. Best case scenario, you recycle the bottle again, and it is melted down and reused through another round of energy intensive production and transportation.
Although some experts argue that grapes do not require extensive amounts of fertilizer like many other crops, the amount involved in wine production is definitely not negligible given the size of the industry. Increasingly, wine producers understand these negative effects and are choosing organic methods for their wine production.
