reWINE: reusing wine bottles

reWINE logo
Type of organisation or company
Country
Spain
Language for original content
Sector
Scope
Submitted by
Technopolis Group
Ongoing
Yes
Description

reWINE LIFE is a Catalonian project, running from 2016 to 2020 and co-financed by the EU's LIFE Programme. It sought to demonstrate the viability of reusing glass bottles in the local wine industry.

It involved a system for collecting, cleaning, re-labelling, filling and re-distributing bottles. The project also engaged local stakeholders: consumers, producers, bars, restaurants, wholesalers and shops. It successfuly reduced waste and greenhouse gas emissions, while lowering costs for producers. The bottles were collected from restaurants, shops, producers and waste collection and recycling facilities, and washed before being returned to the producers.

Main results

In Catalonia, more than 9 million bottled drinks are consumed every day and 6% of these are wine bottles. Manufacturing bottles is responsible for most of the wine industry's CO2 emissions. The 20-month pilot project achieved a number of results:

  • 150 000 bottles sold with the reWINE label and 82 239 bottles recovered
  • The recovered bottles were reused up to 8 times, representing a potential saving of 170 000 kg of CO2 equivalent
  • 34 tonnes of waste not generated
  • Plans to keep up the project, expanding it to other wine producing regions in Spain and, possibly, Europe