As More Companies Use Sustainable Packaging to Sell Wine, Expect to see More Cartons in the Wine Aisles

It is a sustainable packaging design that’s enough to make the traditional wine snob wrinkle his nose. Yellow + Blue Wines now offers several varieties in a Tetra Pak sustainable packaging carton. You’ll be able to find the Argentinean varieties of Malbec and Torrontes in this new, unique and earth-friendly sustainable packaging.

Offering a range of certified organic wines, Yellow + Blue is already known for using other natural and sustainable packaging and processes in its vineyards. Glass wine bottles may not seem like such a wasteful packaging method, but according to a Life Cycle Inventory study by Franklin and Associates, the new Tetra Paks sustainable packaging cartons use 92 percent less material as traditional glass bottles. Since the sustainable packaging cartons are lighter and take up less space than a glass bottle, the sustainable packaging of the Tetra Paks can be packed and shipped more efficiently.

But how does the wine taste? Reviews, for the most part, have been positive. Like this review on the wineloverspage.com:

Based on a couple of preliminary tastings that I undertook to check whether more extensive “blind” comparative tastings would be justified, my initial response is a cautious, slight positive: The Tetra Pak doesn’t seem to impart bad or “off” flavors, at least assuming that the wine is fresh.

But most wine aficionados will point out that so far, the most successful wines to be delivered in the sustainable packaging Tetra Pak are simple, clean wines. More complex, aged wines may not last so well in the Tetra Pak. But that doesn’t mean that the sustainable packaging Tetra Paks aren’t housing quality wines. As of now, they are just better suited for wines of a certain type.

Bamboo Bikes: Sustainable Manufacturing Reaches the Cycling World

You may have heard that biking is the most efficient form of transportation. Now there’s a Santa Cruz bicycle maker who’s made the ubiquitous two-wheel transport even greener with a sustainable manufacturing method that’s both elegant and innovative: bamboo-frame bicycles. By controlling the shape of the growing bamboo, he has created a sustainable manufacturing method that creates bike parts that can be fitted together to form a sturdy frame.

As of now, Craig Calfree has only been able to make his bamboo-based bikes to order, but recently he has been experimenting with methods of growing bamboo into pre-formed shapes which will result in a more efficient sustainable manufacturing business. It will also give him the ability to churn out more bikes, and hopefully make them more affordable than the current $2,700 price tag.

Right now Calfree shapes the bamboo by forcing it to grow through barriers that will force the naturally straight-growing plant to conform to the curves needed for a bike frame. Calfree says that the sustainable manufacturing of bamboo is perfect for bikes—it’s both stronger and lighter than most metals and absorbs vibrations from the road much better.