Clink, Drink, and Rethink: A Sustainable Wine Journey

Dive deeper into the broader issue of wine bottle waste, responsible for a significant portion of carbon emissions in the winemaking industry. Discover the environmental impact of soda-lime glass and the unique challenges faced in recycling. Plus, gain insights into practical tips for responsibly recycling wine bottles at home and creative ideas for repurposing old bottles. It's a captivating conversation on sustainable dining and the transformative power of innovative solutions. Tune in to Crbnly Conversations and be part of the movement to pour positive change into the world. 🍷🌎 #WineWasteRevolution #CrbnlyConversations #Crbnly

Useful Resources
This DC Restaurant Bought a $10K Glass Crusher to Turn Wine Bottles Into Plates
The Problem With Wine Bottles - The New York Times
Most Local Glass Isn't Actually Recycled. Three Northern Virginia Jurisdictions Are Changing
Silo London | Zero Waste Philosophy
How To Recycle Wine Bottles?
Recycling Glass - How it helps environment | WWF
Glass: Material-Specific Data | US EPA.
CARBON FOOTPRINT

Find and join the Conversation!
@crbnly on the IG
Crbnly Conversations on YouTube
Tik Tok
Buzzsprout for all the Casts
and X marks the spot

Music and beats mixed by A. Sarr.
Reach out to learn about the skills and beats you need in your life

Transcript

Shane (00:02.706)
All right. Hello, carbon Lee listeners. Welcome to another episode of carbon Lee conversations with Shane and Chad. How are you today, Chad?

Chadwick (00:12.322)
I'm doing pretty good. It's bright and sunny. It's not, I mean, it's very holiday-ish outside, but the weather is mid-50s. I'm loving it.

Shane (00:18.124)
Yeah.

Shane (00:21.93)
Yeah, not looking like we'll have a white Christmas this year, that's for sure. But I'm not, I'm not too mad at it.

Chadwick (00:26.35)
No, that's, I'm not too mad at it either. On a totally random fun fact, Austin, Texas has never had a white Christmas. It's never snowed on Christmas in Austin, Texas. It's just something I randomly read the other day since they've been tracking weather. So for those of you that have had white Christmases, think about all the states that you could live in where you have.

Shane (00:51.806)
Yeah, that's true.

Chadwick (00:52.846)
This is not at all what the episode's about, but totally off a tangent. Off the rails.

Shane (00:56.65)
Yep, has some holiday ties to it. But before we get into the episode, as always, just want to remind everyone that Carbonling Conversations is a podcast where we examine the intersection of community, lifestyles, and consumption in our lives. We've created this in a hope to share our stories and curiosity to motivate actions and lessen our own carbon footprints. And also use our platform to create a space for our listeners.

community members to share their Carbon Lee journeys as well. And we appreciate the support. If you wanna listen to more episodes of this podcast, we've made it pretty easy. All you need to do is scroll down to the show notes and click on find and join the conversation. And that'll give you a link to access all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app. So you can pretty much listen to us on.

Most of the major apps. And we're on social media. Check us out on Instagram, TikTok, X, and then also YouTube. We try to post most of the episodes on YouTube. So you can just go to YouTube and search Carvenly Conversations and like, join, subscribe. Any support is appreciated. But we've got a good one for you today.

Chadwick (01:57.73)
indeed.

Shane (02:23.342)
This episode is titled, Clink, Drink and Rethink, a Sustainable Wine Journey. So it's the holiday season. We know wine is a lot of people's favorite drink of the season. There's gonna be a lot of wine drink within the next week or two, especially with New Year's. So yeah, we just wanted to kind of touch on what the...

Chadwick (02:23.895)
We do.

Shane (02:53.442)
What the effects could be of wine bottles? What do you do with the wine bottles when you're done? What are some different options? Things like that. So I know you're, I guess more of a wine drinker than I am, Chad. Is there any type of wine you wanna recommend for our listeners?

Chadwick (03:15.07)
Oh, so that's a funny statement when you start thinking about wine, and here's why. Usually the experience, the place, the people that you're with really drives the type of wine, right? And what I mean like that you could have two buck chuck or some Boone's farm and have your best friends, a bonfire on the beach, and that's gonna taste like the best wine ever. So I'd recommend drinking, you know, whatever's there.

Shane (03:30.undefined)
Mmm.

Chadwick (03:43.17)
versus like I'm having this sit down dinner and we're really looking to pair our meal with some like really great tasting wines. And there's definitely ways to do that too. So I'm in the big, I'm a big fan of the spectrum. Like there, like I do have a favorite grape that I love to drink, which is a Grenache.

Chadwick (04:02.914)
But I think for our listeners out there, be curious. Ask a lot of questions because you start to unpack like all the work and effort. And I mean, in the end for me, it's like wine makers, vineyards, and really just farmers. And instead of producing cheese, pork chops, eggs, you pick your favorite dairy or a farm product, they're making wine.

Shane (04:22.999)
Yeah.

Shane (04:32.721)
Mm-hmm.

Chadwick (04:33.494)
Most of them have a story to tell if they're not this large, like commercially produced, like eight gazillion bottles a year production. So they have a story to tell on a family to tell you about and how they got there, which is I think that the best way to enjoy wine is with a story and some friends. So long winded, clearly have some passion there. I'll let it dissipate because you've been doing the research on these wine and I'm, and then we're gonna get into the numbers, but I'm...

Shane (04:44.151)
Yeah.

Shane (04:51.938)
There you go.

Shane (04:59.575)
Yeah.

Chadwick (05:04.442)
I've been thinking about it so much lately because like sustainable, biodynamic, regenerative, like wine growing and making practices are not just a hot topic, you know, like sustainability is a hot topic everywhere, but in the wine industry as well. But I never stopped to think and parse like which part of all the production, you know, all the steps in the carbon trail does actually have the biggest impact. So

Shane (05:14.776)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (05:26.976)
Yeah.

Chadwick (05:32.754)
You surprised me on this one, Shane. And I'm here with our listeners to unpack and listen and learn as much. So hit us. Hit us, Shane, just not with...

Shane (05:32.769)
Yep.

Shane (05:40.818)
Yeah, we'll get into it. So I mean, yeah, just not with a wine bottle, I promise. You know, like many of our other topics, we kind of come across random, like...

Chadwick (05:46.498)
Hehe

Shane (05:57.93)
random articles that are really teaching us about this. So I came across an article, there's about a Washington DC restaurant, goes by the name of Oyster with chef Rob Rubba, cool name. So they're already on their carbonly journey to become more of like a zero waste restaurant. So as already they're making, so they make their candles.

Chadwick (06:12.674)
What a great name. Brav, brava.

Shane (06:26.558)
out of filtered cooking oil from the restaurant. And then they team that with some beeswax from a local honey producer. Their menus are printed on recycled paper with pollinator wildflower seeds that you can plant in the ground. The only protein that's served in their hyper seasonal vegetable-centric menu is oysters, which help filter local waterways. And so now what they're trying to do is tackle wine waste.

They go through about 100 to 120 wine bottles a week, which sometimes can be tricky to address when it comes to recycling. It's not as simple as just throwing them in your recycle bin. So they're kind of focusing on that. So what they did was they actually went out and purchased a piece of equipment. I don't know the name of it, but it was about a $10,000 piece of equipment where...

they can now crush their used wine bottles and they're working with a local glass company to where they're taking that crushed glass and now they're making plates for the restaurant with that. So it's just a way to kind of reuse that crushed glass from the wine bottles.

Chadwick (07:28.462)
Okay.

Chadwick (07:48.33)
It's not quite closed loop because they would also be producing wine bottles, right? But they are reducing and reusing at a whole different level.

Shane (08:01.47)
Yep. So, and the reason for that is much of the glass that goes in the recycling bins are never really recycled. We've kind of touched on that in one of our past recycling episodes, because what happens is when the bottles or the jars made of glass, once you toss those into your curbside bins with other recyclables, they'll sometimes break, which then makes it hard for...

Chadwick (08:12.094)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (08:28.854)
the waste company to filter those out and separate them out. And then also they become contaminated. So if you're not properly cleaning them out, once they break, they can contaminate the glass. And then basically that still ends up in the landfill.

Chadwick (08:45.294)
Got it. Yeah, like in essence, because glass isn't, I mean, hence every time you receive something in glass that's shipped to you, it's packaged, so it doesn't break, right? And when you throw it in a recycling bin or the trash heap or anywhere after consumption or consuming whatever's in it, you don't really package it up for safe transport.

Shane (08:47.251)
So.

Shane (09:06.034)
Exactly, exactly. You're just tossing in there. So, so what happens with, so the crushing process, what that does is that produces a fine non-abrasive sand. And then there's also some coarse pieces in there. And then what they do is they take that sand, they put it into a clay mold, which is in the shape of a plate, and then they fire that in the kiln. So,

Chadwick (09:08.546)
Hmm.

Shane (09:33.89)
That's how they end up with their plates. Right now they're at about 50 plates that they're happy with that they're using. So they're-

Chadwick (09:43.534)
Okay, 50 total or 50 types?

Shane (09:47.874)
50 total.

Chadwick (09:49.483)
Okay.

Shane (09:51.018)
So it's, like I said, it's still something new and they're using about 90% of their bottles to make the plates. So it's still, there's still some things to figure out with this whole process. Cause of course you can't just, they don't need a million plates. So it's like, eventually they'll have to find other, I guess products or just things to do with the bottles but at least this is a start for them to do that.

Chadwick (09:59.362)
Got it.

Shane (10:18.346)
And then they're also just working. They hope to do a larger version because right now they're smaller dishes that they serve, um, like a small plate of vegetables or things like that on.

Chadwick (10:33.262)
I mean, which is kind of like, I mean, I've been to several restaurants, right? And imagine sitting down and having the server or the greeter talk to you about where the dishes, your food is being served on was bottles of wine that they previously used last year.

Shane (10:33.847)
and

Shane (10:53.642)
Yeah, the flattened like the flattened. Yeah, I've seen those two or people use those which hey.

Chadwick (10:55.872)
Yeah.

Chadwick (10:59.402)
Boy, I like I've seen where you heat them up. But like the way they're doing this, they're actually taking the glass down and then refiring into plates like so you all get like you get your oysters. Let's say you got oyster Rockefeller coming. If this was me, right, I find my run in this restaurant. And it'd be like, well, let me tell you about where the oysters come from and how it tastes there and what they're going to taste. Here's how it paired with. And this is our 2019 wine vintage plate, meaning in 2019.

Shane (11:05.918)
Okay.

Shane (11:14.165)
Eh.

Shane (11:26.357)
Mm-hmm.

Chadwick (11:28.17)
All the Merlot and, you know, I don't know, Pinot Grigio that we sold has now become this serving ware for our oyster Rockefellers. Like imagine the, you know, just, I mean, I would look at them like, you're crazy. Like what's going on? Like, you mean, you know? So, very interesting. It's almost like, can you go? It's like we deconstructed the restaurant, the building that was in here, took all the metal, melted it down and made our silverware, flatware with it. You know? Like, which is...

Shane (11:37.25)
There you go. Yeah.

Shane (11:42.528)
Yep.

Shane (11:54.386)
Made it exactly. I mean, it would be it would make for a cool story and it would make me personally want to support that place even more so.

Chadwick (12:00.898)
Uh-huh.

Chadwick (12:04.174)
Uh-huh, I think so. Might be a little too expensive to do that, but it'd also be cool as hell if we're using local businesses that are already in that trade, right? Like that foraging trade, hence they're doing this themselves. But yeah.

Shane (12:09.236)
Yeah.

Shane (12:17.403)
Right.

Shane (12:20.942)
So after reading about what Oyster was doing, of course, I wanted to dig in even, we wanted to dig in even more to see like, okay, what are some of the, what's the carbon footprint of wine production? Like, what are some more facts that we can kind of look into and we'll have Chad share some scary, but some facts that I will hopefully, you know.

Chadwick (12:36.181)
Uh-huh.

Shane (12:49.17)
make us change some of our ways, but you know.

Chadwick (12:52.822)
I mean, let's think about it differently. Number one and number two, how do we make sure we get the wine bottles we purchase and consume kept intact all the way to the recycling facility? Just for the little bit that I'm starting to gavel down on this, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, and this is what I was alluding to earlier is we did some research and sharing out here from, it's actually the...

Shane (13:05.41)
Right.

Chadwick (13:21.506)
California Sustainable Wine Growing Alliance. A lot of this data's coming from, and for those that don't know a lot about wine, like California is a major region in North America and the United States that produces.

Shane (13:24.792)
Mm-hmm.

Chadwick (13:35.338)
So they also have all these certificates, programs, research, you know, just like you have a Department of Agriculture for your states, like they literally have like a Department of Wine growing because it's such an important asset to the state. So they've done a lot of research on what makes it sustainable or not. And on that lane is like so in their research, they're sharing that wine bottles are responsible for 50 to 70 percent of the carbon emissions of most wineries.

Meaning like if you total up all the carbon output from growing your crops, harvesting your crops, producing the crops into wine, storing it, having tastings, all the people coming and going, your workers driving, the power you have. And when you total that all up, once you start to buy the bottles, fill them up, label them and put them out into the universe for people to consume by, you know, purchase, store.

Shane (14:16.29)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (14:30.004)
Yeah.

Chadwick (14:32.782)
that's where half or more of their carbon footprint of carbon dioxide comes from. Which if you would ask me to guess what that number was, probably I would have not said that large. Hence, I think we, at least for myself, but like our carbon light journey, I think we're gonna have to go and dig a little bit deeper in glass. And like glass recycling and glass production. And I mean, we just talked about it recently on no sleep till zero waste.

Shane (14:55.211)
Yeah.

Chadwick (15:02.55)
I still want to go that, bo-no. Like, I don't know about you, Shane, but every time I have that noise in my head. Yeah, the precycle store, where you can either buy food already packaged in glass containers that you can return and get a dollar, or you can bring your containers, they'll clean, weigh, and then you can fill them, and then you just get paid for the amount of food that you need to buy in bulk. Glass is really useful, but also,

Shane (15:02.57)
Zero Waves. Ha ha ha. Beastie Boys.

Shane (15:18.932)
Mm-hmm.

Chadwick (15:29.302)
comes at a cost. And so I think that was one of our arguments that we made. And in one of those past conversations is that the more you get to reuse it, the more value or the, like the lower it's carbon footprint or the lower the impact has on the environment. So anyways, kind of going around about a way of like, I'm shocked, literally shocked. And I'm really excited about knowing this. Okay.

Shane (15:40.631)
Right.

Chadwick (15:56.17)
So wine bottles are made from a type of glass known as soda lime. This is the most common type of glass and it can be recycled over and over and over again without losing its quality. Kind of like tin cans and specific aluminum cans, like you can recycle aluminum forever. So that's interesting and good to know. In fact, most recycling plants prefer soda lime glass because it's so easy to recycle.

Shane (16:11.788)
Yeah.

Chadwick (16:21.986)
DPA weighs in here that only 30% of this glass in the United States is recycled compared to 74% in Europe and more than 95% in Sweden, Belgium, and Slovenia. And for those that have been like paying attention in the last few episodes, Sweden's got it pretty, they got their recycling game on par like with the punamic tubes just and it whisked it away. Yeah, they're like

Shane (16:33.527)
Yep.

Shane (16:38.561)
Yep.

Shane (16:42.338)
Yeah.

Shane (16:45.682)
Yeah, they're crushing the rest of the world. Yeah.

Chadwick (16:51.542)
Just build tubes everywhere. Get your garbage where it needs to go simple and easy. I mean, wasn't the line in the video, it's like they've ran out of things to recycle so they actually import other countries' trash to recycle. Yeah, imagine in America that that's something we did. Like, I think a third of America would be like, what are you talking about? Like, we're doing what? Why do we want that? Like, I don't think you just, it's not in our culture.

Shane (17:02.396)
Yeah, yeah, crazy.

Shane (17:14.516)
Yeah.

Chadwick (17:20.97)
Comprehend that not at all. Okay So and they go on the EPA does it's actually worse than 31% As much as that glass is crushed and used to build roads Rather than melt down for new glass. So our addiction to the automobile Like I guess our wine drinking habits are feeding our addiction to roads. I Mean we need roads report

Shane (17:21.447)
Not at all.

Shane (17:35.594)
Nyeh.

Shane (17:39.893)
Exactly.

Shane (17:46.858)
Which that's also interesting. I never knew glass was even part of that process, but.

Chadwick (17:51.102)
I mean, we are just getting our minds blown here about clink, drink, and rethink our sustainable wine journey. So here's the fun fact, glass made from recycled materials produce 50% less water pollution and 20% less air pollution. So a big major incentive to recycle. And if anyone remembers the 2020 and 2021, the pandemic, the supply chain issues, and if you were an avid wine drinker or...

Shane (17:54.281)
Yeah.

Chadwick (18:21.174)
visitor of wine shops or wineries they all told you trying to get glass bottles was really hard so it sounds like Hey, I'm just thinking out loud Shane. You give me your reaction here I think there's leverage for a business to be started. Maybe not by us, but by maybe one of our listeners There's a lot of wine being drank. Let's just put it out there a lot of glass bottles with wine in our communities What if there was a collection?

just the glass from wine.

And like, or it comes back to your wine shop and you get pick it up there. And all of a sudden all that wine's getting wine bottles are being then managed without being broke or broken to the same thing. So it's not like, um, mixed and match. And then you're producing new wine bottles for the wine growing industry in your area and in the United States. I mean.

Shane (19:05.863)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (19:15.25)
Yeah, it would have to be hyper local because the when you get into shipping it to certain areas, then you have to the packaging and you know, they the

Chadwick (19:20.055)
the shippy.

Chadwick (19:26.242)
But I wonder if you could like program that out. Like here's the tools you need, here's the amount of square footage you need, here's like the collection system you need, and here's how many wineries are in 100 miles of you, or 250 miles of you. And like then you started like planting these using just really clear like geography data, like you know, business data, geography data, and like building this program out. And then, I mean, it seems like there's a lot of glass.

Shane (19:30.923)
Yeah.

Shane (19:51.99)
Yeah, because...

Chadwick (19:56.726)
readily available and then we could tap into the wine growing industry on a carbonate scale.

Shane (19:58.72)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (20:05.206)
Yeah, because they even, and one of the, when I was doing the research, one of the recommendations was like, you could take your old glass wine bottles and maybe start purchasing wine in bulk. Maybe, I guess, like I said, I'm not much of a wine drinker, but I guess there's places where you can purchase the wine in almost like a keg or something like that to where it's, you're getting more in the packaging and then just basically fill those.

old bottles back up in Corcum.

Chadwick (20:37.959)
Oh, like reusing them. Yeah, yeah.

Shane (20:40.03)
Yeah, or if you make like wine at home, of course you have those bottles to use. But there's a lot of things to it. And then especially there's a New York Times article, which the link will be in the bio of this episode if anyone's interested. So a lot of it's with perception. So historically, of course, wine has been bottled in glass bottles.

because that's typically because the wine will sit and age because aged wine is even more tastier. But on average, most wines in the world are consumed within a year of purchase. So there's really no need of that glass bottle, but still producers are using the glass bottles because it's a lot about perception. The consumer perceives the glass as a higher quality or

Chadwick (21:15.582)
It can be, not all, but yes.

Shane (21:35.47)
more prestigious drink compared to the bag in the box is compared to like poor people's wine, you know? So.

Chadwick (21:37.782)
Mm-hmm.

Chadwick (21:46.43)
Yes, there is definitely a perception that if it's not in a bottle, it's crappy or wine. It's not always true. It can be. But I hear you.

Shane (21:52.406)
Yeah.

Shane (21:58.582)
So there's all kinds of things like that. So, I mean, we recommend everyone out there listening to, I guess, if you're a wine drinker, start your own journey and maybe see where you're able to help with this issue. But we'll leave it off with, we wanna just give some tips on how to properly recycle your wine bottles at home. So the first thing you...

The first thing you want to do is just check with your local recycling program to make sure that the wine bottles are even accepted. I think most programs do accept them, but that's the best step to start with, because then you're just basically wasting your time and it's going to end up in the landfill anyway. And if they do accept them, you know, rinse them out as best as you can. And then that helps with the contamination. And then also.

Chadwick (22:33.95)
Mm-hmm.

Chadwick (22:44.877)
Huh?

Shane (22:54.23)
try to remove the labels. So by removing the labels, that will help the recycling plant identify the materials better to where they can properly do their job with them. And then like I said, rinsing them out helps prevent contamination and having it end up in the landfill anyway.

And let's say your local place doesn't allow wine bottles. There's a couple of fun things that you can do with wine bottles, with old wine bottles. Go get a special glass drill bit or anything like that, that'll help you cut glass. So you can make candle holders without cutting anything. You can use them as a vase, fill them up with water, stick a flower or stick a...

Chadwick (23:41.502)
Uh huh.

Shane (23:46.734)
plant cutting in there and use it use it for a vase. I saw some things online where people take the bottles and create bird feeders out of them and the other way for me that I probably would see myself using them would be using them for storage. So some people will take their favorite herbs and spices, fill those up, cork them, and kind of save their herbs and spices that way. But there's plenty of things you can do.

plenty of things you can do with them, especially now that you know the effect that they can have on your carbon footprint. So we hope this information's helpful.

Chadwick (24:27.586)
Yeah, dynamite. I love that information. I love that those ideas and just get a little creative with it But I mean there's a carbon lay business model like we've got it out there. So

Shane (24:40.778)
Yep. And if you're in the Washington DC area, go check out Oyster Oyster, tell them that Carvenly sent you and let them know that you heard about them from our podcast and enjoy what they're doing. So.

Chadwick (24:42.847)
Anyways.

Chadwick (24:59.854)
100%.

Chadwick (25:03.202)
Well, have a carbonally rest of your day, Shane and our fellow listeners.

Shane (25:03.458)
But.

Shane (25:07.754)
Yep, till next time.