Design for Lightest Glass Wine Bottle Online for Free

The design for the lightest glass wine bottle developed in the U.K. has been made available for free.

The U.K. Waste & Resources Action Programme's (WRAP) GlassRite Wine project put the design for the 750 ml glass wine bottle on its website, free for download.

The screwcap bottle weighs 300 grams, about 40 grams lighter than the previous lightest bottle available in the U.K. and 188 grams less than the average wine bottle. It is also designed to include 71 percent recycled content, which WRAP says would provide a market for the surplus of green glass in the U.K.

A working group headed up by Tesco, Quinn Glass and Kingsland Wine & Spirits developed the bottle, and Tesco has already ordered 10 million of the bottles. WRAP says that other retailers like Asda, The Co-operative and Sainsbury's have shown interest in the bottle.

While some companies have switched to plastic bottles for wine in order to reduce packaging materials and cut down on transportation emissions (by having lighter loads), sticking with lighter glass bottles provides recycling benefits, since glass can be recycled over and over back into itself while plastic is not infinitely recyclable.

WRAP's GlassRite Wine project launched in 2006 and ended earlier this year. WRAP says that the project's work with the wine industry reduced glass bottle weight by a total of 27,048 tonnes by using lighter bottles, increased the use of recycled glass in bottles by 44,295 tonnes per year, and increased bulk importation of wine for filling in the U.K. (as opposed to importing pre-bottles wine) by the equivalent of 190 million 75cl glass bottles. WRAP estimates that bulk importation reduces carbon dioxide emissions from wine transportation by up to 40 percent.

_{Wine bottles - CC license by Flickr user Stewart}