Glass still dominates UK wine shelves, yet bottles account for around 40% of wine’s carbon footprint. With alternative formats gaining momentum, Andy Neather asks whether it’s time for the trade to break with tradition and embrace a broader, more sustainable, spectrum for packaging

From solar power to recycling, there are many things wine businesses can do to cut their carbon footprint. Yet their biggest source of emissions is sitting on the shelves right in front of us: glass bottles. And until we make a bigger break with tradition and package in other ways, wine’s carbon footprint will stay stubbornly high.

Today more than 90% of wine sold in the UK comes in glass. That’s around 1.5 billion 75cl bottles a year. Glass is extremely energy intensive: furnaces are gas-powered and run at up to 2,000°C. Once you’ve switched them on, you can’t switch them off again during their 15-plus year lifespan.

This is why, on average, around 40% of a bottle of wine’s carbon footprint is accounted for by the bottle alone – and that’s before you’ve transported it anywhere.

But we have alternatives. Cans are portable, easy to chill and don’t smash on the go. The Wine & Spirit Trade Association quotes NIQ Retail Measurement Services figures showing canned wine sales up 17% in the off-trade last year, though they still made up just 0.3% of total sales. “The alternative formats category is seeing strong growth overall,” adds Emma Penman, wine buyer at Waitrose. The supermarket’s sales of canned wine are up 30% on last year.

Aluminium can be recycled infinitely – and around 75% of cans in the UK do get recycled, putting the rates higher than glass. The big sustainability drawback is that mining and smelting bauxite to make primary aluminium is incredibly energy intensive and polluting. Melting down recycled cans takes only about 5% of that energy, but you still need to recycle a can many times to get a more reasonable carbon footprint.

Canned wines also have a limited shelf life of around nine months, because they need a food-grade plastic polymer lining, which degrades over time.

Then, there’s bag-in-box (BIB). These account for just 2% of the UK wine market, though sales are growing. The Wine Society says that its BIB sales so far in 2025 are almost double last year’s. This year the society will increase its number of BIB lines to 30.

Lowest carbon footprint

In France, BIB makes up almost half of sales in supermarkets, and 60% in the stores of the Swedish monopoly, Systembolaget. BIB keeps wines fresh up to four weeks after opening, giving consumers wine on tap. BIB is lighter in weight than bottles and more efficient to stack and ship. In fact, it has the lowest carbon footprint of any wine packaging: greenhouse gas emissions per litre are around 7.5 times lower for a three-litre BIB than a lightweight 420g bottle.

The downside for retailers is limited shelf life – just six to 18 months from filling. So BIB demands careful inventory management. Nor is it very green: while the outer carton is easily recycled, the inner bag is made of layers of metallised film and plastics. The plastic taps usually end up in landfill.

But there are other solutions. Packamama makes a partially flat 75cl bottle from rPET recycled drinks bottles. It weighs just 63g, generates around half the emissions of a 500g glass bottle and is recyclable.

Plastics are not ideal. But as Packamama CEO and founder Santiago Navarro points out, “this is plastic that’s in circulation – we’re not encouraging new oil extraction”. Meanwhile, bio-based polymers offer the prospect of much greener plastic in future.

Packamama now makes 1.5 million bottles a year and The Wine Society has adopted them for several bestselling wines. Indeed, the society says its BIB and rPET bottle sales last year were equivalent to 155,000 glass bottles, thereby cutting 63 tonnes of packaging. With the start of Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging from October, this will become a powerful argument: the society’s EPR levy saving on those BIB/rPET sales is around £9,500.

Limited shelf life

The catch, again, is limited shelf life. Though Packamama bottles include an ultra-violet barrier and an oxygen scavenger, the company will only guarantee fresh wine for 18-24 months.

Yet the reality is that 92% of wine sold in the UK is consumed with 48 hours of purchase. Maybe we should stop pretending that every bottle is potentially going to mature in a cellar for 10 years, when the majority are going to be opened with a takeaway pizza or ready meal.

A small proportion of wines really do need the longevity of a glass bottle. But for the large majority of Britons’ wine drinking, cans, plastic or BIB are just fine – and would transform the industry’s sustainability.

Andy Neather blogs at aviewfrommytable.substack.com. His new book with Jane Masters MW, Rooted in Change: The Stories Behind Sustainable Wine, was published on 1 October by the Academie du Vin Library.