Blog 6- Sarah Pearson- Reusing wine bottles and the misleading claims of water bottle companies

Samantha MacBride talks about the inefficiency of glass recycling in today’s society. It is better economically and more sustainable to have refillable bottles similar to the early 1900s. After reading about the glass recycling industry, I wanted to see if I could find some businesses that currently refill bottles instead of recycling them. I discovered how the wine industry, especially in California, is making strides in this effort. California wineries are making efforts to decrease glass waste.

Wine Bottle Renew is a business running out of Napa, California who washes and refills used wine bottles. This business is trying to persuade other wineries that the old idea of reuse can be good for business. California is leading the way with sustainability in the United States. California shows that sustainability and decreasing waste is possible. Being one of the largest wine production areas in the United States, they have turned attention to reusing bottles through using Wine Bottle Renew. 150 companies are using the Wine Bottle Renew service. Most of the company’s customers are smaller wineries, but bigger wineries have started using the service. The reused bottles typically cost 10% less than new. Reusing wine bottles is popular in Europe and the company wants to make it that way in the United States. Bottles are sorted, inspected, labels are removed, they are washed, sanitized, then approved in the final inspection. California wineries have been trying to reduce their environmental impact. This business helps them get closer towards a goal of sustainability. Wine Bottle Renew is the country’s only wine bottle washing facility. The company does admit that a new way of business is difficult, saying that change doesn’t happen easy in the wine business. But really, change isn’t made anywhere with the snap of a finger, it requires a lot of work. I admire what Wine Bottle Renew is doing, and I hope that other industries can develop similar ways of reusing bottles. Wine Bottle Renew helps me believe that such a change to refillable bottles is feasible.

I then became curious about how to change the bottling industry for other things like bottled water. The Wine Bottle Renew company is making strides in primarily in California for wine, but I wanted to know how other companies could do similar things. As I was researching, I came across a video titled ‘The Story of Bottled Water’ from the story of stuff project. We watched a video by her on the first day of class. The water bottle industry thrives not on only convenience, but by providing misleading information. Water bottle industries claim that their water is better than tap water. But as shown in the video, people taste testing tap water from bottled water typically choose tap over bottled water. Water bottle industries thrive by claiming that tap water is dirty. This misleading source of information turns consumers in the direction of purchasing bottled water. Bottled water also puts pictures of pretty mountains and nature on their bottles, but don’t show the terrible effects and pollution of creating water bottles and the way they are disposed of in our society. In all honesty, plastic water bottles don’t need to be reused because they shouldn’t be created in the first place. It is just another example of how companies try to make it seem like a population must have a certain product.

Ferry, D., (2011). For New Wine, Vintage Bottles. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved January 12, 2015 from  http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512740082451866

The Story of Bottled Water (2010). Story of Stuff Project. Retrieved January 12, 2015 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se12y9hSOM0