ProCork

In improving environmental practices, the wine industry has traditionally focused on vineyard and winery issues - water, pesticide, herbicide, chemical usage, runoff and waste water being key target areas.

Other operators in the food and drinks sectors are in a similar position but they have also concentrated on packaging and forced the environment to be one of the key drivers for packaging companies.

A classic example is Cadbury promoting its conversion to a biodegradable natural starch tray for its Milk Tray product. This tray was developed in Australia by the CRC (Co-operative Research Centre) for Food and Packaging and is now used in Europe by some of the world's most exclusive chocolate companies.

The Research Director of the CRC and inventor of the starch material used by Cadbury, Dr Gregor Christie, said that the wine industry had a huge advantage in being able to present its environmental case with packaging.

After the CRC, Dr Christie founded ProCork to develop membrane technology to improve the sealing performance of cork. He said cork was a product that had all the environmental benefits the packaging industry would die for. "It is light weight, natural, recycled, a greenhouse gas sink and its use protects wildlife. Wine sealed in this way promotes a high class environmental image. You can't get more organic than cork.'

A complete life cycle study conducted in Germany by The Institute for Applied Ecology, Freiburg, where the environmental impact of natural wine cork and screwcap were compared, came out in favour of cork.

The study concluded: "Cork closures perform considerably better than aluminium screwcaps across the most environmentally-relevant criteria and key environmental problem areas (resource depletion, contribution to the greenhouse effect, and their tendency to contribute to acidification)."

References:

Life Cycle Assessment – Natural Cork v Aluminium Screwcap, The Institute for Applied Ecology, Freiburg Germany, 1996