GreenBottle in action.
To drink or not to drink..from a bottle that isn’t glass, that is the question. A UK company has invented the world’s first paper wine bottle. But will purists drink wine from it?
GreenBottle has already invented the world’s first paper milk bottle, featured in TreeHugger last January and already hitting the 100,000 sale mark.
Now they are expanding into wine bottles, based on the same green principles. GreenBottle has developed a prototype paper bottle for wine that is theirs alone and is currently in talks with supermarkets and wine producers to make it available to the British public as early as next year.
The revolutionary packaging is made of paper with a thin plastic lining. The paper outer shell is compostable and biodegradable. It will break down naturally when disposed of on a compost heap and can be recycled up to seven times. On the compost heap, it will only take a few weeks to decompose.
The inner liner is made of recycled plastic. It can be recycled along with other plastics in the weekly recycling collection. It takes up less than 0.5% of the space of a plastic bottle if dumped in a landfill.
The inventor, Martin Myerscough, was inspired by a discussion at the pub (where else?), with the operator of the local landfill site. Learning about the huge amounts of plastic waste accumulating there, he started thinking. He says: “The best thing about GreenBottle is that consumers just ‘get it’. We’ve found that if you offer them the choice of a paper bottle or a plastic one they’ll choose paper every time. Choosing milk in GreenBottles enables consumers to ‘do their bit’ for the environment every day.”
The benefits of paper over glass are many:
The carbon footprint for a wine GreenBottle is 10% of an equivalent glass bottle.
GreenBottles are lighter (55g compared with 500g)
They are non-breakable.
They also have insulation (so they will stay cooler longer on the table).
Best of all, they are the same price as a glass bottle.
Top photo greenbottle/Promo image
