From the vine to your table, your favorite glass of Cabernet or Pinot Grigio packs a pretty hefty carbon footprint.
Laurens van de Vijver, VP Marketing/Environment Tetra Pak U.S. & Canada, said, "If you look at a glass bottle very often the weight of the package exceeds the weight of the content. That obviously has a lot of impact on the carbon footprint."
Instead of glass, try carton wine. It's not boxed wine -- just quality table wine with an environmental twist , van de Vijver said.
"If you compare the average glass bottle used for wine to a carton package, the carton package is 90 percent less packaging," he said. "When we talk about carbon emissions, it's 80 percent less carbon emissions. You need 40 percent less trucks to ship the same amount of wine in carton packages.
If glass bottles of table wine in the United States were replaced with Tetra Pak, it would be the equivalent in greenhouse gas emissions as taking 377,000 cars off the road.
If the environment isn't incentive enough, Beth Kennedy, Tetra Pak's Marketing Manager for food and beverage in the U.S. says think about the convenience.
"It's easy to reseal, store, and it maintains freshness of the product," Kennedy said. "Customers appreciate that."
